


No Quiet Life for Me

by Cassy27



Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bartosz is a psychiatric patient, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jonas is a psychiatric patient, Martha is a psychiatric patient, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Psychiatric setting, Set after Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:34:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 36,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24111388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cassy27/pseuds/Cassy27
Summary: Something went wrong when an unknown Martha appeared and took him away from his world right before the apocalyps happened. Jonas wakes up in a psychiatric ward and must find his way back home. Convincing alternate Martha and Bartosz that he isn't crazy proves to be difficult, however, because he's known to suffer from psychoses in their world.
Relationships: Franziska Doppler/Magnus Nielsen, Jonas Kahnwald/Martha Nielsen
Comments: 10
Kudos: 57





	1. Maybe This Time

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at a Dark-story. Ever since I discovered this show, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I hope you'll enjoy the idea my mind has concocted, that you'll enjoy reading this story as much as I have enjoyed writing it. There are five chapters, all written, so updates shall come regularly.
> 
> Thank you, LittleBookOwl, for sticking with me through my Dark-obsession and editing this chapter for me!

His hands were bound. Before Jonas opened his eyes, before sight or sound returned to him, he noticed that his hands were _bound_. With a groan, not entirely conscious yet of his situation, he pulled at his restraints, but his muscles were too weak to free himself. He could barely move, his bones too heavy, and panic surged up his throat when the realisation hit him that he couldn’t move, threatening to suffocate him. Gasping, he blinked open his blue eyes and forced his vision to focus, for the blurriness to disappear.

He lay in bed, a restraint tightly strapped around his chest, two around his wrists, and two around his ankles, and no matter how hard he tried to pull at his limbs, he couldn’t move them. His chest began to heave, with exhaustion, with exertion, and his mouth turned dry. His gaze desperately searched the room, hoping to find a clue as to where he was, as to what was happening, because the last thing he remembered…

_Warm, thick blood sticking to his skin._

_Her breath rattling inside her chest._

The walls surrounding him were white, filthy and old, as if they hadn’t been painted in over twenty years. There was no window, no natural sunlight, and Jonas realized that his eyes hurt, because an even older looking lamp hung above his head, producing a too-sharp light. There was a door, too, his only way out, if he could ever free himself from these restraints at least.

Forcing his lungs to draw in deep breaths, Jonas calmed himself. He needed to stay calm and _think_ if he wanted to find a way out of… A way out of _what_ exactly?

_Guttural sounds leaving her blood-stained lips as she tried to speak._

_Her chest stuttering as no air reached her lungs._

_Dark brown eyes ghosting._

_Martha._

This was a hospital room, but not just any kind of hospital room. This was an isolation room, a place where they put people who were a threat to others and to themselves, hence the restraints. Jonas had _seen_ this room before, knew exactly where it was, but that knowledge did nothing to ease his mind. His initial panic subsided, his fear dissipated, but restlessness and apprehension remained. He had travelled through time, had seen the past and the future. He had watched people he loved and cared for die. He had survived all that. He could survive _this_. Right?

Still, the notion that he lay tied to a hospital-bed, inside an isolation room, in a psychiatric ward of a psychiatric hospital, filled his stomach with dread, nauseating him.

Footsteps sounded outside, approaching the door.

Jonas swallowed heavily, his mind searching for an answer, to understand what was happening and who had put him here. Was Adam involved? Had he somehow found a way to lock him in here so that he couldn’t foil his plan and stop the apocalypse? Was Noah involved? Jonas hadn’t seen him in a while and the silence surrounding that man couldn’t mean anything positive. Or perhaps this was Claudia’s doing? Jonas hadn’t heard from her in a long time either, but during their time together, when Claudia had taught him everything he knew today, Jonas had also learned not to trust her.

The doorknob turned, the door opened, and Jonas held his breath.

Peter Doppler looked like Jonas remembered him; tall and skinny, with ginger hair and a ginger beard, wearing khaki pants and a brown dress shirt. He moved to stand at the foot end of the bed and smiled faintly, almost sadly, while his dark eyes conveyed nothing but concern. Peter Doppler was a kind man, had been there for him after his father’s suicide last summer, and Jonas knew his intentions were genuine, which had become a rare item these days. He couldn’t help but release a breath of air he hadn’t known to be holding, and relief made his muscles relax.

“Welcome back, Jonas,” Peter said. His hands curled around the metal frame of the bed. “How are you feeling?”

His first instinct was to ask Peter to release him, to unhook these restraints and let him out of this room. His second instinct was to scream and rage at him, because he was so goddamn tired from all this madness happening to him – why _him?_ – but his third instinct was the one he listened to. As long as he didn’t know what the hell was going on, he needed to be smart.

“My head hurts,” he answered truthfully.

Peter’s faint smile disappeared and he nodded. His gaze was fixed on him, assessing him, searching for something, but Jonas didn’t know what. It unnerved him, but more than that, it annoyed him. There was no time for this, no time for meaningless chit-chat, because he needed to get back home, to his own world, _where Martha had died_ , so that he could try and save her.

This world wasn’t his. She had brought him here and it had been a mistake.

“I’m glad you seem to have come back to your senses,” Peter said. “You frightened me with that unexpected…trip you made yesterday, but the medication seems to be working now.”

“Medication?”

Peter walked around the bed and sat down beside him. One hand he placed in his lap, his other he curled around Jonas’ wrist. His touch was warm, meant to sooth, but instead Jonas felt more trapped than before. He couldn’t pull away even if he wanted to.

“We’ve been sedating you, because you were a danger to yourself, Jonas,” Peter explained. “We feared you would hurt yourself, hence…” He motioned to the bed, to the restraints. “How are you feeling besides the headache?”

The thought of tranquilisers coursing through his veins frightened him, but knowing that they might be the reason why his mind had trouble understanding what was going on also calmed him. Getting out of these restraints needed to be his first objective. He needed to approach this problem one sub-problem at a time.

“I think I’m better,” he replied. A guess.

“I think so, too.” Peter smiled and removed the restraints. “Why don’t we both forget about what happened yesterday and focus on the progress you’ve been making?”

What he really wanted to do, was jump up on his feet and rush through the door. He wanted to run as fast as he could, out of this ward, out of this hospital, and to the caves, but he withheld himself, knowing that if he were to do so, he wouldn’t make it very far. Instead, he pushed himself into a sitting position, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and when his bare feet touched the cold floor, it helped clear his mind.

Rubbing the skin of his wrists, where he’d chafed himself from pulling too hard, Jonas let out a sigh and closed his eyes. He hadn’t lied about the headache, and sitting upright seemed to make it worse, the pain now throbbing ominously near his temples.

“Do you think you’re ready to re-join the group?” Peter still sat beside him, his attention still completely on him, as if searching for the lie in his features.

Jonas nodded. He’d do anything to get out of this isolation room.

“I suggest you change into your regular outfit first,” Peter said, that faint smile of his playing around the corners of his lips again. The man didn’t seem capable of producing bright smiles. Then again, Jonas had learned a thing or two about his life recently and he didn’t have much to smile about.

Again, he nodded.

They walked out of the room together, Peter only two steps behind, and Jonas paused as he tried to figure out whether he should go right or left. The hallway in which they stood was long, with equally decrepit walls and different doors that all looked the same. The sunlight that streamed in through a window at the far end of the hall was barely bright enough to illuminate their surroundings, but it still hurt his eyes.

“It’s normal that you’re disorientated,” Peter said as he placed a hand on top of his shoulder and steered him to the right. “The sedatives in your system will soon be completely worn out.”

His room turned out to be at the end of the hall, his name written on a small piece of paper hanging next to the door. It was decorated with a yellow umbrella, as if the door would lead him into a kindergarten-classroom, but the truth was even worse. The room – _his_ room – had those same filthy white walls, a bed with a mattress that seemed completely worn out, one closet, and a desk in the corner with a surface full of carved-out names. The sight of it was enough to have the bottom of his stomach shift away, and as he turned to protest, to plead his case to Peter, he found himself alone.

Perhaps that was for the best. Perhaps this was the opportunity he had been waiting for since he had woken up in this strange place, in this strange world.

Something had gone wrong. There was no other explanation. When that unknown Martha had appeared, when she had tried to take him with her, something had gone horribly wrong, she was gone, and he was stuck here – wherever _here_ was. The caves were his only way back home. With newfound energy, with the realisation that he might be able to fix this sooner rather than later, Jonas threw open the closet and picked out the first T-shirt and jeans he could find. The white hospital-clothes were unnerving and smelled like disinfectant, so he threw those to the side and quickly pulled on clothes that he recognized. His mom had bought these clothes.

 _His mom_. Did she even know he was missing? Did she even care? Those thoughts were enough to make Jonas halt his actions, his fingers suddenly unable to tangle his shoelaces, because his hands were shaking too much. Ever since he’d been a young boy, he had taken to his father. He loved his mom, but he adored his dad, and now, ever since his suicide, they had drifted apart even more. They lived two separate lives and that hurt.

Pushing aside those thoughts – they were useless anyway – Jonas finished tying his shoes, combed back his hair which had fallen in front of his eyes, and hurried out into the hallway. Winden’s Psychiatric Hospital wasn’t big, counted only three floors, and if it resembled the hospital Jonas knew from his world, then he was currently on the third floor. The window at the end of the hallway proved him right.

That meant he needed to find the elevators or the stairs. With pain still throbbing near his temples, with his hands still shaking and nausea still threatening to make him puke, Jonas rushed to the end of the hallway, into another hallway, which lead into a large, open area that seemed to be used as some sort of –

“Jonas?”

Hearing that voice made his heart stutter inside his chest.

Turning on his heels, Jonas was convinced that he was dreaming, that he was imagining things, but there she stood, just as he remembered her.

“Martha…” he breathed as he took in her dark brown eyes, her long, brown hair, and her soft-looking red lips. Around her neck, she wore a familiar necklace, one he had given her last summer. It seemed like ages ago.

Martha took a step forward, hesitantly, but then something seemed to click behind her eyes and she flung her arms around his neck. For a moment, Jonas didn’t know what to do, how to respond, felt like an ancient statue ready to crack and crumble, but when he felt her heart beat inside her chest, against his own, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her as close as possible. She was Martha, the girl he had known all his life. Not that girl who had appeared out of the blue, with bangs making her look older than she really was and a funny orb in her hands. No, this was _his_ Martha – only she wasn’t.

_His Martha was dead._

Letting go and taking a step back, he needed to suck in a deep breath of air to steady himself. His knees were threatening to give out from underneath him.

“I thought they were never going to let you out of there,” she said, grinning.

Every fibre of his being wanted to close the distance between them again, pull her close, wrap his arms around her and never let go, but he couldn’t.

He needed to be careful.

“I’m fine now,” he said, and attempted a smile.

The grin lighting up her face disappeared instantly. “Are you?” Martha frowned and brushed a hand down Jonas’ cheek. He would lean into her warm touch if things weren’t so complicated, so instead he took another step away from her. “You seem…different.”

“I’m still a bit hazy.” He brushed back his hair again, which had gotten too long and began to annoy him. “Peter said that was normal, that the tranquilizers are still in my system.” What he needed to do, was distance himself, physically and mentally, because as much as he wanted to believe that the girl in front of him was the girl he knew, the girl he had grown up with and fell in love with, she wasn’t.

“Kahnwald!” another voice cried out.

Jonas turned just in time to see Bartosz all but throw himself at him, one arm around his neck, his other hand messing up his hair which was already a mess.

“Welcome back to the living room.” Bartosz laughed. When he finally let go, Jonas straightened his back and nearly lost his balance as his head felt like it was close to exploding, each throb feeling like the ticking of a time-bomb, and his vision swam. Martha was there to support him, though, one arm already around his waist. A warning hiss fell from her lips as she told Bartosz to be careful. All he did in response, was shrug. “What took you so long? It’s been so damn boring around here lately.”

Leaving was not an option now. For two reasons. The first was that he couldn’t just turn his back on Martha and Bartosz, because while they weren’t _his_ friends, they still looked like them and sounded like them, and Jonas just couldn’t bring himself to push them away. The second reason was that he felt physically incapable of leaving. If it weren’t for Martha’s supportive arm, he was sure he would crash to the floor.

Now he also knew why this open area resembled something like a living room; because it was. Four large couches stood gathered around a TV. There was a bookcase standing by the wall, filled with old books Jonas knew Martha loved, and a pool-table positioned by the window. In the corner of the room, there was a small kitchenette installed, just big enough for two people to cook something at, probably meant for therapy-sessions. Jonas had been hospitalized most of last summer after his father’s suicide, but this psychiatric ward barely resembled the one he’d gotten to know so well back in his world.

“I’ve gotten rather good,” Martha said, confusing Jonas. She chuckled and pointed at the pool-table. “Do you want to play a game? I can show you the tricks I’ve learned.”

Bartosz rolled his eyes. “Of course he doesn’t want to play a game,” he said. “What he really wants, is to get his ass kicked on the PlayStation by me.”

Jonas pulled himself out of Martha’s grip and took a step away from her, and one away from Bartosz. It hurt to see them, because he was suddenly reminded of how far he had drifted from them. Bartosz used to be his best friend, and now he barely had a notion of what he was up to. For all he knew, he could be dead. Like Martha.

“I actually don’t feel so well,” he muttered and avoided their concerned gazes. It wasn’t a lie. When Martha wanted to approach him again, he shook his head and raised a hand, silently asking her to keep back. “I think it was too soon. I’m sorry.”

Without another word, he turned and walked away, ignoring Martha’s confused protests, and silently thanking Bartosz for telling her to give him space. He couldn’t deal with them, couldn’t look them in the eye without threatening to shatter. The girl he loved was dead. His best friend might be dead. Everyone he knew might be dead, because of something he had started. He didn’t deserve to have this time with them.

No, what he needed to do was retreat, gather his strength, and keep going.

Leaving during the day seemed impossible, so Jonas would wait until nightfall.

* * *

It was around midnight when he threw his legs across the edge of the bed for the second time that day and got up. Sometime after leaving a befuddled Martha and Bartosz behind, he had fallen asleep, which his body had seemingly needed, because he felt better now. His mind felt clearer, his muscles stronger. Throwing on a sweater and pulling the hood over his head, he snuck into the hallway and made his way across the darkness.

Finding a flashlight would be a concern for later. His main objective now was getting the hell out of here. Arriving in the living room, he found there was a small light still burning. For a moment, he feared someone was still awake, but one quick glance around the room told him he was alone. He needed to be careful, though, because this was still a psychiatric hospital; nurses were bound to be around. He needed to make sure he wasn’t caught.

There was a door at the other side of the living room and, above it, another small light burned. It indicated that in case of an emergency, that was the exit; the staircase would be there. His heart began to beat faster inside his chest, the prospect of freedom making his feet move faster. Jonas strode across the living room and pulled open the door, only for a voice to tell him to stop.

“Where are you going?”

With his back turned towards her, the doorknob clenched between his fingers, Jonas squeezed his eyes shut and cursed quietly. “Go back to bed, Martha,” he tried.

“No.” She sounded adamant. “Tell me where you’re going.”

With a sigh, he turned around and lowered his hoodie. Martha was staring at him with impossibly dark eyes, half of her face cast in shadows. Even so he could see confusion lining her features, but there was no time to try and explain himself.

“Go to bed,” he tried again.

“ _No_.” She stepped forward, curled a hand around his wrist, and pulled him away from the opened door. Only now did he see there were tears shimmering in her eyes, but she didn’t seem sad. On the contrary, she seemed angry and… Jonas couldn’t quite put his finger on it, couldn’t pin her down, which once again reminded him of the fact that this girl standing before him was a stranger. “Tell me where you’re going, Jonas,” she demanded stubbornly.

He could lie, but what good would that do? Clenching his jaw together, Jonas tried to make the right decision, but then realised there was no right decision, so the truth seemed like his best option. Perhaps she would understand.

“I need to go back to the caves,” he said. His attention flitted to Martha’s hand still firmly wrapped around his wrist, the touch grounding him, calming him funnily enough. Martha had that kind of effect on him. “I can’t explain, but I just… I have to go there.”

Her grip on his wrist tightened, but Jonas still didn’t pull away, not even when her nails scratched his skin.

“To the caves?” When she blinked, a tear rolled down her cheek. “Why?”

“Please keep your voice down,” Jonas begged. It was a miracle no-one had caught them yet.

“I knew you were different.” Martha grabbed hold of Jonas’ sweater and pulled him closer. “I knew it from the moment I saw you this afternoon. This isn’t the sedation in your system.”

“Martha…”

“What’s going on?” From out of the shadows, Bartosz appeared.

 _Shit_.

“I have to go,” he repeated, desperate.

Martha still refused to let go of him, though, and Jonas didn’t dare pry her fingers off him out of fear that he would hurt her, and – That was when he recognized the look on her face. She was angry with him for trying to sneak away, but she was also afraid. Of what, Jonas didn’t know.

“He wants to go back to the caves,” Martha said with a tremor to her voice.

“Dammit, Jonas,” Bartosz sighed.

“I told you he was acting strangely,” Martha continued. She shook him then, or attempted to anyway. She didn’t have enough strength to throw him off balance. “Why would you do this? Why would you put me through something like that again?”

Jonas had no idea what she was talking about. “Like what?”

“Jonas…” Bartosz shook his head in disbelief. “I’ll go find help.”

“No!” In the blink of an eye, he freed himself from Martha’s grasp, pushing her away, and while he hated the gasp that left her lips, a gasp filled with shock and disbelief and anger and fear, Jonas forced himself to turn away from her and focus on Bartosz instead. “Please don’t.”

“We’re only trying to help you,” Martha said.

“I would explain, but you wouldn’t understand,” he said. “I need to get to the caves, because…” His mind refused to cooperate. The words refused to form in his mouth. The edges of his vision swam, because his heart was racing and his lungs were drawing in too much air. The truth wasn’t going to help him, he realised. Jonas felt tears sting his eyes.

“Jonas,” Bartosz said. “Don’t you understand why we can’t let you go there again?”

He would pull at his hair if that wouldn’t make him appear unhinged. Instead, he closed his eyes, forced away his tears of frustration, drew in one deep breath, and focused. These were Martha and Bartosz, and while they weren’t from his world, he still knew them, even if only a little. These were his friends.

“Last time you went there,” Martha was crying softly, “you tried to kill yourself.”

He would have laughed if her tears weren’t so real. All he wanted, was to brush them away. All he wanted, was to pull her into his arms and tell her to stop crying, because he never meant to hurt her like this, to frighten her like this. Instead, he found himself knocked off balance by her words, as if they had physically punched him in the gut.

“Kill myself?” he echoed hollowly. The notion felt ridiculous, but Martha was crying and Bartosz was staring at him with nothing but worry in his gaze, and Jonas knew they weren’t lying. Then he noticed Bartosz was staring at his neck. Jonas gingerly touched the skin there, feeling the scar that seemed to haunt him in every world. “No, I would never…” He stopped talking when he realised there was nothing sensible he could say.

“You tried to hang yourself,” Martha said, angrily wiping away her tears.

Bartosz seemed to be biting back tears, too.

His head swam, because he couldn’t keep up, couldn’t process the information they were giving him. Jonas had always considered himself to be strong, because despite everything that had been thrown his way, he was still standing tall, because he was still fighting for those he loved. They were the only reason he kept going. The idea that he would try to hang himself, like his father, it…frightened him.

“No, I would never…” Who was he to say that he would never attempt such a thing? These weren’t his Martha and Bartosz, and he wasn’t their Jonas. They simply didn’t know. They couldn’t possibly understand. “You don’t understand. I need to get to the caves, because… Because I need to go home.”

Martha sucked in a deep, sharp breath and straightened her back. “Do it, Bartosz,” she said.

Before Jonas knew what she meant, before he could try and stop her, Bartosz was already running across the living room, calling out for help. For a moment, for one fleeting moment, frustration flooded his system and Jonas turned to flee through the door, to attempt this escape anyway, thinking he could outrun them, but Martha threw herself in front of him, slamming the door shut and blocking the exit. She grabbed hold of Jonas’ shoulders and pulled him close.

“This is for your own good, Jonas,” she whispered into his ear.

There was no time to react, no time to protest or to push her aside. There was no time to melt into her embrace instead and inhale the scent of her hair. Two male nurses came running their way and pulled him away from her. There was no air left in his lungs to protest, not as he saw Martha’s tearful eyes and puffy red cheeks. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was, for not having been able to save her. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her, but there was no time for that either.

The nurses dragged him away from her, and there was nothing he could do.


	2. Extinguish All my Recent Pasts

It had been a long night, back in that isolation room, but at least they hadn’t bound him. Jonas felt exhausted, the kind of exhaustion that crept into his bones, made him want to lay down in bed, curl up on himself, and not move again. The kind of exhaustion that made him think he had an inkling of an idea of how exhausted his father must have felt before he had– He stopped that line of thought. Thinking of his father filled him with too many emotions and all of them crushed him.

Needing something else to focus on, Jonas raised his gaze and looked around the room he sat in. Peter Doppler’s office was surprisingly spacious, with one large window offering a view of Winden’s Forest. One side of the room was covered with bookcases, all filled with books Jonas had no interest in, while the other was covered with filing cabinets. For a moment, he considered opening a few drawers, but then found that even in this world he would never dare invade someone’s privacy like that.

Peter’s desktop was surprisingly clean. There was a computer on standby-mode, an empty note-pad, and a few pencils laying to the side. And one red file which Jonas only now realised had his name written on it. His heart skipped a beat and, with shaking hands, he reached for the file and flipped it open. He probably shouldn’t be doing this, could be in even more trouble if Peter caught him, but this file could offer some answers he was desperately seeking. If he knew what the hell was going on, why he was here, then maybe he could find a different, easier way out of here.

The first page only held general information. His name, age, address, first contact-person which was, unsurprisingly, his mother. Still, to see her name written there, Jonas’ fingers ghosting over the ink, he was reminded of how much he actually missed her. There was no time to feel sentimental now, though, so he blinked away tears he had no control over and turned the page.

 _‘Diagnose: psychosis’_ he read, a word that felt like a slap to his face. Jonas knew little about psychological disorders, but he had paid enough attention at school to know that psychosis meant being unable to differentiate between what was real and what wasn’t. His hands began to shake with anger. _‘Jonas was admitted to Winden’s Psychiatric Hospital shortly after his father’s successful suicide. His mother explained Jonas’ behaviour as odd. At first, he became withdrawn, refusing to leave his room and refusing to eat. Then he started talking about impossible things, like time-travel, which can be defined as hallucinations. Jonas started hearing noises coming from Winden’s cave-system and believed they offered a way to travel through time. It is in my professional opinion that this is Jonas’ psychological attempt to cope with his father’s suicide. The sudden loss of a parent is always distressful, and in Jonas’ case, it has led to a series of psychoses in which his mind has come up with a way of saving his father. His mother confirms that Jonas had a tight bond with his father–”_

Unwilling to continue reading, Jonas snapped the file shut and threw it back on top of Peter’s desk. His heart beat furiously inside his chest, not because they believed him to be psychotic – in this world, he might be, Jonas honestly couldn’t tell, because this world was alien to him – but because he saw his chances for escape diminishing with every passing moment.

And with every second ticking away, his chances of saving Martha decreased.

 _But Martha is here_ , a small voice in the back of his head whispered. Jonas leaned forward, buried his head in his hands and curled his fingers around his hair, pulling at it. He squeezed his eyes shut and told that small voice to shut up, because his Martha was dead. Because of him. He had been unable to stop Adam – Adam who was his older self, and didn’t that make things even more fucked up?

A sob escaped him without his approval, and Jonas quickly slapped a hand across his lips, refusing to let his anger and frustration and pain reach the surface of his mind. There was no time to stop and think about everything that had happened. There was no time to allow his emotions to take the upper hand, because he feared that if he let them, he would never be able to control them again. They would shatter the surface of his hard-fought-for glass exterior of control. They would break him.

Pressing the palms of his hands to his eyes, to force away his tears, to desperately try and regain some form of self-control, Jonas sucked in a deep breath of air and righted his back – just in time, because the door behind him opened and Peter Doppler walked in. He held two mugs in his hands, set one down in front of his patient, and took a seat at the other side of the desk. For a moment, he paused, staring at Jonas and undoubtedly noticing his red, tearful eyes, but he made no mention of it. Jonas silently thanked him.

“Drink up,” Peter said, motioning to the steaming mug of what turned out to be hot chocolate-milk. “You look like you can use it.”

Jonas stared at the mug for a moment, unsure if he liked or loathed the contents, and as he was staring at it did he realize he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in the past twenty-four hours. As if on cue, his stomach growled, and Jonas gingerly grabbed hold of the mug. “No coffee?” he asked before bringing the mug to his lips.

Peter chuckled softly. “Caffeine is the last thing you need right now.”

Perhaps he was right. Jonas released a soft sigh and leaned back against his seat. With his hands curled around the warm mug, he stared at the red file again, wishing he had read on after all. Still, now that he knew why he was here, shivers kept running down his back and the little hairs at the base of his neck pricked, a sense of doom looming over him.

“Procedure dictates that I call your mother after an incident,” Peter said after a short silence.

Jonas tore his gaze away from the file and blinked. The idea of hearing his mother’s voice made his heart beat faster inside his chest, because he missed her and he would give anything to hear her voice again, to hear her tell him that everything would be alright, but the woman he would hear in this world wasn’t really his mother. Hearing her voice would only fill him with fake comfort. No, Jonas realized, the last thing he wanted, was to hear a stranger’s voice.

Whatever it was that Peter saw in his gaze, whether it was a surge of panic, anguish or desperation, it was enough to have him straighten his back and lean forward. He actively sought eye-contact with his patient.

“But there hasn’t been an incident, has there?” he asked.

Jonas swallowed heavily, swallowing away the lump that had formed near the back of his throat. “No,” he replied. “There hasn’t been an incident.”

“Promise me one thing, though,” Peter continued with a tone of gravitas to his voice. Jonas had never seen the Peter of his world like this; as if his confidence was true. Genuine. In this world, he wasn’t just a therapist; he was a psychiatrist and he seemed to be good at his job. Which was probably a bad thing for Jonas. “No more trying to sneak off to the caves in the middle of the night, because this is the second night in a row–”

“Of course.”

Peter’s eyes narrowed at his too-quick response, but if he felt offended by his patient’s blatant lie, or disappointed, he made no note of it. “I’ve asked the nurses to bring your breakfast to your room,” he said. “Go on, you seem famished.”

* * *

His room wasn’t empty. Arriving in the doorway, he paused when he found Martha sitting on his bed. Her hands lay clasped together in her lap and her knees rhythmically bouncing up and down. She seemed all wired up and, as soon as she saw him standing there, she jumped up on her feet and took two quick steps forward, only to halt suddenly.

“Jonas…” Her voice sounded thick with emotion. And exhaustion. Dark circles around her eyes indicated that she had slept as little as Jonas last night. “I’m sorry they locked you in that room again.”

“I’m okay,” he said.

Her hands were still clasped together. “Are you angry?”

The question caught him off guard. “Angry?”

Martha nervously folded a lock of hair behind her ear and then clasped her hands together again. “We only meant to do what was right,” she explained with a trembling voice. Jonas could no longer stand how tightly her hands were folded together, so he stepped forward, closed the distance between them and curled his hands around hers. He found them cold. “You have to know, Jonas, that the idea of you going back there–”

“I’m not angry,” he interjected, to stop her from talking, to stop her from going down that memory-lane. It clearly upset her, and he hated to see her upset. He hated to see her eyes shimmer with unshed tears and he hated to see her bottom lip tremble with sadness. “I know you only meant well.”

A heavy sigh escaped her lips and she let her body lean against Jonas who could only wrap his arms around her small frame. It felt nice to hold her like that, as if he could protect her – _he hadn’t been able to protect her before_. The thought came so suddenly, so brazenly, that it knocked the air from his lungs. A shiver ran down his spine and those little hairs on the back of his neck pricked again, because as he stood there, holding the girl he loved, he knew that it was wrong. She wasn’t his to hold, not here, not there. There was no world in which he should love her.

Unless… If this was a world without mystical time-tunnels buried deep in the cave, then this might be a world where his father wasn’t her brother. Could it be?

“Martha.” There seemed to be no air left in his lungs and his tongue felt thick suddenly, making talking difficult. It was a simple question, a direct question; _Where is Mikkel?_ Three easy words and, once answered, some part of his being might be able to find rest. Perhaps, after these three simple words followed by a few simple words from Martha, he could stop feeling so guilty as he longed to kiss her.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I’m sorry to interrupt this nice moment,” an overly sweet voice dripping with sarcasm said.

Jonas shot away from Martha as if suddenly they were two repelling magnets. As if caught doing something wrong. Turning on his heels, he saw Franziska Doppler standing in the doorway, her arms crossed before her chest, her long red hair loosely hanging around her shoulders, and a bored expression on her face. Jonas hadn’t expected her to be here. Was she a patient, too?

“Franziska,” Martha greeted, annoyed.

“Your idiot brother is here,” Franziska said and, after throwing a look at Jonas, she turned and left.

Martha smiled. “Magnus is here.” She sounded happy. “Will you come with me?”

Now that he saw her smiling, now that her voice seemed lighter than before, he couldn’t bring himself to say no. Nodding, he let her take his hand and guide him out of his room and towards the living room where Magnus was waiting for his sister. He smiled upon seeing her, wrapping an arm around her neck and pressing a kiss to the top of her head – Jonas couldn’t imagine such a thing happening in his world. Then he stretched out a hand for Jonas to shake, which he did, hesitantly.

“It’s been a while,” Magnus said, looking at him.

Martha elbowed him in the side, a grunt falling from his lips.

“Ow,” he protested, giving his sister a harmless shove. “I’m just making conversation.”

They sat down on the couch closest to the PlayStation, a conscious decision according to Martha, who quickly went ahead and told Magnus not to bother inviting Bartosz for a game of _Need for Speed_. Magnus had only rolled his eyes and mentioned something about his sister being old-fashioned for not even knowing how to power-up a PlayStation. They bickered on for a while, and Jonas found that he couldn’t tear his gaze away from her. She was beautiful, the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and he couldn’t understand why she was here, in a psychiatric ward.

As he stared at her, observing the way she threw her head back when Magnus made a particularly funny comment, observing the way small wrinkles formed around her eyes when she squeezed them shut as she laughed or the way she kept brushing her hair back, Jonas realized that he shouldn’t be staring at all. No matter how beautiful he found her, no matter how much he longed to hold her and tell her he loved her, she wasn’t his Martha.

Lowering his gaze, Jonas closed his eyes and tried to think of something other than Martha with a bullet hole in her stomach. The memories came on too strongly, however, obliterating every other thought. There were only images of blood flitting through his mind, hurting his head. He saw only Martha gasping for air that would never reach her lungs. He saw only Martha coughing up blood and desperately trying to speak.

“Jonas?”

Snapping out of his thoughts, Jonas raised his gaze to meet those of two concerned friends. At least, he assumed Magnus was his friend in this world. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I was somewhere else.”

“Obviously,” Magnus said.

Martha reached out and placed a hand on his knee. “Are you alright?”

Jonas forced a smile on his face. “I’m fine.”

There was a moment during which nothing happened – or a lot happened, really. There was only silence, but Martha’s eyes narrowed with disbelief, and Jonas realised that even in this world he couldn’t fool her. She could see straight through his façade.

Magnus rolled his eyes for the second time since arriving. “Have you two happened yet?” he asked abruptly.

A shocked gasp left Martha and she slapped her brother’s arm. “Magnus!”

“Ow, violence!” Magnus fake-cried. “I spot violence over here! Isn’t there a zero-tolerance for violence?”

It surprised Jonas how easily they could slip into nonchalance and settle into their easy brother-sister-relationship. For whatever reason Martha was here, Magnus seemed able to ease her worries. She laughed. She spoke airily. She made jokes and comments and when she smiled, it was the kind of smile that made Jonas’ heart flutter inside his chest. If he didn’t enjoy seeing Martha like this so much, he’d almost feel jealous. Instead, he felt drawn in by her, felt the urge to smile and laugh and joke with her, but he couldn’t. Each time he attempted a smile, the faintest of smiles, he felt like he was betraying his Martha back home.

“I am the one offended,” Martha said. Jonas had missed part of the conversation. “You pretend to come here for me, but you and I both know you’re really here for Franziska.”

“That is a blatant lie,” Magnus huffed.

“Even as we sit here, you’re constantly looking around, hoping to see her,” Martha argued.

Jonas snuck away. It was the best solution he could come up with right now – no, it was the _only_ solution he could come up with. His head hurt, that throbbing sensation near his temples having returned, and his stomach churned. As much as he enjoyed Martha’s company, especially as she was acting so…vibrantly, he also hated it, because his Martha… He hurried down the hall and bit back tears threatening to spill over. His Martha was dead.

He had hoped to reach his room quickly and quietly, but as he got there, he found it wasn’t empty. Halting, momentarily confused, Jonas stared at Franziska sitting at his desk, her feet up on the desktop, a pencil twisting between her fingers. His pencil apparently, not that she cared.

“Is there something you want?” he asked hesitantly. There wasn’t a thought in his already hurting head that could explain why she was in his room, seemingly waiting for him.

“I’m not sure,” she answered. Spinning around the desk-chair, she continued to toy with the pencil between her fingers. “When I saw you this morning, I thought you were different.” Stopping the chair from spinning around, she stood and moved to stand directly in front of him. Too close in front of him. Jonas fought the urge to step back. “I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

He clenched his jaw together. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think it’s your hair,” Franziska reached out and brushed her fingers through a few strands of his hair that had fallen in front of his eyes again. Jonas pulled away. “It’s longer than it was before you ended up in isolation.”

“Well,” Jonas said as his heart beat in his throat. “I have been in there for a while.”

Franziska chuckled. “No-one’s hair grows that quickly.”

There wasn’t enough distance between them and Jonas felt as if she was sucking up all the oxygen around them, leaving none for him. Blinking, he stepped around her and moved to stand by the window, wishing he could ignore her, but Franziska kept her attention firmly locked on him.

At least she didn’t follow him across the room.

“Whatever my father tells you–” she started, the sudden change of subject confusing Jonas and helping very little with his steadily-growing headache, “–don’t let him get into your head.” She was staring at him with impossibly bright eyes. “I’ve heard it, too, you know.” Her voice was so soft that he barely understood what she was saying. “The noises coming from the cave. I’ve heard them, too.”

The words felt alien, empty, and by the time Jonas understood what she had said, understood the meaning of it, the importance, Franziska had left. Part of him wanted to run after her and ask her what she meant by that, but he had a feeling that was exactly what she wanted and Jonas felt too damn tired to indulge other people’s games.

Sighing, he felt relieved that he finally had a moment to himself, a moment where he could drop all pretences and just _be._ There was no-one around to watch him cradle his head, wishing for that throbbing pain to end. There was no-one around to witness him curl his fingers through his hair and pull at it, in frustration, because he felt clueless as to what was going on and how he could get out of this mess. There was no-one around to see the tears roll down his cheeks as he couldn’t delete the image of Martha dying from his memory.

Guilt moved around his chest like a claw, digging into his skin and threatening to tear out his heart. Not just guilt for being unable to save Martha, for being unable to stop Adam, to stop _himself_ , but because there were so many things he had done wrong lately. The more he thought about it, the more he knew how much he had screwed up. _Gigantically_. Seeing Bartosz again reminded him of a lost friendship. They had always been close friends, for as long as he could remember, but now he had lost track of him, had distanced himself from him, and for what? He had spent the last few months trying to stop the end of the world and it might have all been for nothing. For all he knew, Bartosz was dead.

Like his mom. Jonas couldn’t even remember when they had last spoken. After his father’s death, she hadn’t changed much. For a while, he had been convinced his mother didn’t even miss him, but then again, he knew their marriage had been…difficult, especially near the end. They had loved each other – at least, a form of each other. It was painful knowing his parents’ marriage wouldn’t have lasted anyway.

And then there was his grandmother. His mom had never liked her, but she was still his grandmother and Jonas knew he had neglected her. Now it might be too late to tell her that he loved her.

It might be too late to tell anyone that.

* * *

Franziska’s words continued to play around his thoughts, but Jonas was torn between believing and disbelieving her. If she had really heard noises coming from the cave, then there might be an easy way back to his world. Somehow. He would need to work out the details of that plan later on. But there was also a second plausible scenario; Franziska might just be messing with him. They were, after all, both patients in a mental hospital. Jonas knew why he was here, or why his other self was here to be precise, but he was clueless as to why Franziska was hospitalized.

Truth be told, he was clueless as to why anyone was here. Martha seemed…okay, but if she really were okay, she wouldn’t be here. He could ask her, but she already felt suspicious about him, so the last thing he wanted was to cast more doubt onto himself. The last thing he needed was Martha telling Peter about odd questions he was asking, which might lead to a few more nights in solitary confinement.

No, Jonas simply didn’t have time for that.

As he made a decision, a dangerous, possibly reckless decision, his best friend appeared in the doorway. Bartosz leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed before his chest, his gaze slightly narrowed as he stared at Jonas with suspicion in his light brown eyes.

“Could you please stop worrying Martha?” he asked.

Jonas parted his lips to reply, only to realize he had no sensible response. He was well aware that he was acting strangely, that he was not the version of himself that they had known for years already, and he couldn’t make any promises of change.

“I’m sorry,” he settled on. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

Bartosz smiled, pushed himself away from the doorframe, and sauntered into the room. “They’re right, though,” he said as he came to sit beside him on the bed. “You seem different.”

This was his best friend. They had grown up together, learned how the ride a bicycle together and learned how to steal each other’s bikes. They had made jokes in class, both appropriate and inappropriate, and had laughed about them together. They had fallen in love with the same girl and had fought over that girl. This might not be his Bartosz, but he was still _Bartosz_. He couldn’t be that different.

“I need your help,” Jonas said, pushing out the words before he changed his mind. “But you have to promise not to tell Martha or anyone else.”

Bartosz let himself fall back onto the mattress and stared at the ceiling. “Tell Martha?” he asked with a tight, yet playful voice. “What am I? A tattletale?” He laughed then, heartily, and Jonas suddenly felt catapulted back to a time, to where he and Bartosz had an easy friendship, uncomplicated by disappearing people and time-traveling tunnels. “My boy wants to get into trouble and he’s inviting me along for the ride.” Bartosz grinned proudly. “I’m in!”

* * *

“Hurry up,” Jonas mumbled, irritated because Bartosz was taking too long to pick the lock.

“Shut up and keep the flashlight higher.” Bartosz sat on his knees in front of Peter Doppler’s office-door, a paperclip in one hand and a hairpin in the other. Where he had found those items, Jonas didn’t know and he hadn’t asked, though he had an inkling he’d nicked them from Martha. Where he had found the flashlight was another mystery, but at least they had one, and Jonas planned on confiscating it after tonight. He had more plans involving this flashlight.

There was a soft click, followed by a triumphant _‘hell, yes’_ from Bartosz as he pushed open the door. Jonas hurried into the office after him and quickly closed the door behind him, relieved that they were out of sight. The last thing he wanted, or needed, was the night-nurse catching them breaking into their psychiatrist’s office.

Last time he had been here had been this morning and the office had been bathed in warm sunlight. Now the room was dark and cold and empty, and the air smelled even staler than before. Jonas paused a moment to shine his flashlight across the desk, but his file was gone. The note-pad was gone, too, and the computer had been completely shut down. There was nothing of interest there.

“Why are we doing this again?” Bartosz asked, slightly confused. He walked past the different filing cabinets, his hand brushing across the cold metal. Jonas shone the flashlight into his face, which earned him a displeased and inappropriate grunt as Bartosz squeezed his eyes shut and shot a curse-word at him. “Can you not?” he asked as he shielded his eyes with a hand.

“Aren’t you curious?” he asked in return. “I want to know what Peter has been writing about us.” It was only half a lie. Jonas approached the cabinets and let his gaze slide from left to right, quickly deducing that the files had been organized alphabetically. Since he knew what his file said, he decided to find another file first.

Stepping to the right, he opened the drawer with the letter ‘N’ written on the front. ‘ _Martha Nielsen’_ the file he’d carefully picked out read.

Bartosz came to stand beside him. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Go find your own file.” Jonas handed him the flashlight and took a seat at Peter’s desk then, clicking on the small desk lamp which he decided wouldn’t draw extra attention to the office. They just needed to keep quiet and be quick. _‘Martha Nielsen’_ he read again and simply seeing her name on a piece of paper made his heart beat faster.

Skipping the first page, Jonas began reading the second.

 _‘Diagnose: self-harm and depression.’_ Jonas cursed himself for not having figured this out on his own, because now that he thought about it, he realized he had only ever seen Martha wearing long-sleeved T-shirts. _‘Martha was admitted to our psychiatric ward on a voluntary basis after the murder of her younger brother Mikkel. Since young adolescence, she has had a history of self-mutilation, behaviour that has increased as she got older. Her mother confirmed that this self-destructive behaviour began before her brother had gone missing one year ago, and that it became uncontrollable after her brother’s body had been found in Winden’s Forest. Martha turns to cutting her arms and thighs, resulting in multiple hospitalisations with little effect. Her brother’s initial disappearance–”_

“I can’t believe that jerk,” Bartosz snarled as he dropped another file onto the one Jonas was reading, demanding his attention. “Doppler says I have Borderline.”

He wasn’t making any sense and as much as Jonas wanted to keep reading Martha’s file, he also wanted to know what _Borderline_ meant exactly. It was a term he had heard before, but he didn’t understand it. Opening Bartosz’ file, he flipped through the first few pages and began reading Peter’s notes.

“What a self-righteous, pompous ass,” Bartosz rumbled.

“Shut up and let me read,” Jonas warned, rolling his eyes and silently willing Bartosz to keep his voice down.

 _‘Diagnose: Borderline personality disorder’_ he read. _‘After five ambulatory therapy-sessions, it was in my professional opinion that the best course of action was to hospitalize Bartosz Tiedemann for a few weeks. That way, I could gather more extensive and thorough information concerning Bartosz’ personality. After his mother’s initial opposition, Bartosz was finally admitted to the hospital and I was quick to notice different personality-aspects fitting a Borderline personality disorder. He shows impulsive and risky behaviour, has an unstable self-image, and experiences unstable relationships. His moods often swing, making it difficult to predict his behaviour, and he often portrays intense displays of anger. During his first two weeks of hospitalisation, he broke one PlayStation, smashed one window, and punched a fist through the wall of his room. Medication does seem to have a positive–”_

“Are you done reading?” Bartosz was pacing up and down the room, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. Jonas didn’t recognize his friend in Peter’s notes, but as he glanced up and saw Bartosz glaring at him with such heat in his eyes, he found that he didn’t recognize him in real life either. “Can you believe that asshole?” If the room weren’t so dark, Jonas was convinced he would see a vein throbbing near Bartosz’ temple. “First of all, I don’t have an unstable self-image and I don’t have unstable relationships.” The flashlight in his hand squeaked as he held onto it too tightly. “That man observes me for a few weeks and he thinks he knows me!”

“Keep quiet,” Jonas warned.

“Don’t look at me as if he’s right,” Bartosz snapped. “Why don’t we dig up your file? I’m sure you’ll like what Doppler has written about you.”

“Will you calm down?” Jonas shut the file with a definitive sound, stood, and dropped it back into the filing cabinet from which Bartosz had dug it up. This had been a mistake. Or perhaps asking Bartosz for help had been a mistake, because he had been an idiot to think that these were copies of the people he knew. They weren’t, that much was clear now. “It’s just one man’s opinion,” he added as he stepped to the cabinet with the letter ‘D’ written on the front.

“Can we go?” Bartosz continued pacing the floor.

Jonas pulled out Franziska’s file and opened it to the second page. _‘Diagnose: drug-dependency’_ and Jonas couldn’t help but think back to that moment in the forest, all those months ago, when Franziska had found Erik’s stash.

_‘Franziska began using soft drugs (marijuana) at the age of fourteen and, by the age of fifteen, she had already turned to hard drugs (ecstasy, speed). This dependency led to a complete loss of social contact and bad school results caused her to drop out of school altogether. She experienced fatigue and insomnia, rise in blood pressure and body temperature, headache or dizziness. When she accidentally overdosed, she reached out for help and agreed to a hospitalisation at Winden’s psychiatric hospital, under the care of her father (Dr. Peter Doppler). Franziska has experienced severe withdrawal symptoms, ranging from palpitations, sweating, to hallucinations, and–’_

Jonas had read enough. Sighing, cursing himself for having let Franziska get into his head, he closed the file and fought the urge to throw it across the room.

“Now can we go?” Bartosz asked, still peeved.

Biting down on his tongue, to prevent himself from screaming out his frustrations, Jonas nodded. He couldn’t believe he had let his hopes grow based on nothing more than something Franziska had said. He also felt frustrated with himself for having gone through all the files. Only this morning he’d told himself he would never dare invade someone’s privacy like that and now he had gone and done exactly that.

After shutting down the desk lamp, Jonas stepped around the desk and joined Bartosz by the door. The only light inside the office came from their flashlight. A shiver ran down his spine, a sense of dread filling him. Jonas had learned much tonight, but he still felt no step closer to getting out of this world and back to his own.

“This was a terrible idea,” Bartosz grumbled as he opened the door and–

–and found that they stood face to face with the night-nurse. She had switched on the light in the hallway (how they had failed to notice, Jonas didn’t know) and stood with her arms crossed before her chest. Jonas didn’t know this woman, only knew her name was Gabriella because that’s what her nametag read, and that she was looking at them with nothing but disappointment and anger in her dark eyes. Her fingers drummed against her upper arms.

“What is this?” she asked with a tight voice.

Jonas glanced at Bartosz who only briefly glanced back at him.

Gabriella exhaled sharply through her nose and took a step aside. “To your rooms, _now_ ,” she bit at them. “We’ll discuss consequences in the morning.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Bartosz mumbled. He handed over the flashlight and hurried down the hallway.

Jonas stared at his disappearing form, barely recognizing his friend, but as he moved to follow him, to make his way to his own room, the nurse curled a hand around his arm and held him back. His first instinct was to pull back and free himself from her grasp, but instead he simple stopped and met her gaze.

“Dr. Doppler told me to keep an extra eye on you tonight,” she said, her dark eyes having narrowed to two slits. Her lips were nothing but two thin lines. She was looking at him as if she was looking at something impossible. Jonas felt his skin crawl. “This isn’t like you, Jonas,” she said more softly now. “Sneaking around at night, breaking into Dr. Doppler’s office…”

“Like I’m different,” Jonas said, pulling his arm free. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. May I go now?”

Gabriella stared at him for three long seconds, blinked, and then nodded.

* * *

This was the visitor’s room.

Jonas sat at a table that was empty except for an ashtray. The walls were a shade of pale green and the curtains were bright yellow. Three paintings hung on the wall ahead of him, each one of them portraying a scene from a harvest. The first painting had a bright blue sky, the second a grey one, and the final one was dark with rain pouring down on an empty field bellow. Jonas could almost imagine what it would feel like to stand inside that painting, underneath that black sky where lightning tore through the clouds. When he closed his eyes, he could feel the rain pouring down on him, soaking his hair and clothes. It was a sensation he longed for.

With his eyes still closed, Jonas focused on the feeling of rain washing down his bare skin, washing away Martha’s blood. Washing away his guilt. He could almost imagine what it would feel like to be free of his father’s death. He had tried so hard to stop it from happening, had chosen that day to come back to, to talk to his father and beg him not to leave him, but instead, he had pushed him towards the idea. Instead, he had convinced him it was the right thing to do.

Instead, he had killed him.

The door to his left opened.

Jonas blinked open his eyes and found the one person he hadn’t wanted to see or hear enter. His hands started to shake in his lap, so he balled them into tight fists. A lump formed near the back of his throat which he tried swallowing away, to no avail.

His mother halted in front of the table, her hands clasped around her purse. She looked exactly as Jonas remembered her. Her brown hair was pulled back into a messy bun, her lips had a soft, pink colour, and she wore her favourite red scarf. Every fibre of his being ached to close the distance between them and feel her wrap her arms around his shoulders, because despite their…troubled relationship, despite their disconnection, she was still his mother and he her son. They loved each other and he needed her.

He _needed_ her, but she couldn’t help him.

Jonas lowered his gaze, staring at the empty ashtray, and reminded himself of the fact that the woman standing in front of him wasn’t his mother, not really.

A few weeks after his father had killed himself, he and his mom had talked, really _talked_ for the first time in a long time. For the first time in a long time, he had felt as she were there for him, as if they could achieve a relationship after all, but then all that madness had happened and– Jonas stopped his own mind, knowing it would lead to nothing productive anyway, and inhaled sharply.

“Are you going to just sit there in silence?” His mother pulled back the chair on the opposite side of the table and sat down. Still, Jonas couldn’t meet her gaze. “Peter called me and told me what you did.” She reached into her purse, fumbling for something, and found what she’d been looking for; a cigarette. Jonas watched her light it up, watched her inhale deeply and exhale slowly, a puff of smoke floating in front of her. “Aren’t you even going to try and come up with an explanation?”

He wanted her to leave.

“Jonas?”

“I’ve always been curious,” he started as he stared at his mother’s fingers holding the cigarette. He fought the urge to snatch it from her grasp and throw it into the ashtray. “Were you jealous?”

“Jealous?”

Finally, _finally_ he dared to look into her eyes and found that they were exactly as he remembered them to be; light brown and shielded. Jonas had never taken after his mother. He looked like his father, physically, as well as mentally. They shared the same interests, the same humour, the same taste in music, and he wondered what it was that she saw right now. Was it painful for her to look into his eyes and see her husband? Is that why she had always put up a wall between them?

“Were you jealous that I’ve always been more his son than yours?” he asked.

His mom looked confused. “Peter warned me that you were–”

“–different, yes, I’ve heard that a lot lately.” Straightening his back, Jonas reached for his mother’s cigarette with newfound courage and stabbed it out into the ashtray. “You know how much I hate it when you smoke.”

She stared at him, baffled. “Jonas…”

“I know about you and Ulrich.” He watched her confusion twist into shock. “These past few months, I’ve learned a lot, you see. I’ve uncovered truths and lies, and it’s been one shock after the other, but everyone expects me to just…keep going. Everyone expects me to save the day, but no one stops to wonder if I _want_ to save the day.”

His mom’s hands shook where they lay on the cold, smooth surface of the table. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said with a small voice. “You’re scaring me.” She reached out for him, wanted to fold her hands around his, but Jonas pulled away.

“Tell me honestly,” he said. “Are you or are you not having an affair with Ulrich Nielsen?”

Her jaw clenched together and she grew pale, which was all the answer Jonas needed.

“My father died and you couldn’t wait to invite another guy into your bed.” His words visibly hurting her, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. In fact, her pain, anguish, and shock fuelled his anger. That was when Jonas realized he _wanted_ to be angry. He wanted to feel rage, and scream.

Heat steamed just below the surface of his skin, and Jonas wanted to release it all. He wanted to jump up to his feet and shove aside the table and storm out of this room, because all that would be better than the alternative.

Tears sprung into his mother’s eyes.

“You’ve been so caught up in your own life that you didn’t even stop to think what all this shit has been doing to me!” Just as he wanted to stand, just as he wanted to kick back his chair and leave, his mother reached out and folded her hands around his wrists. He wanted to push her away, uninterested in what she had to say in response, uncaring about the tears that rolled down her cheeks, but then he caught her gaze and Jonas felt thrown back by what he found in them; determination.

“You can be angry with me all you want. You can scream and shout at me all you want,” her voice was strong and determined and unshattered by her son’s broken expression, “but don’t for a moment think that I don’t care. I love you, Jonas, _you_.” When he wanted to pull his wrists free, she didn’t let him. “You need help, I know you need help, because I do know how much you’ve been struggling and it pains me that I can’t be the one to help you.”

His breath was coming out in short, shallow bursts.

“My marriage to your father wasn’t perfect,” she continued. “We weren’t right for each other, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t love each other. I miss him, of course I do, and I’m grateful for all the good years we had.” Her grip on his wrists loosened, but Jonas couldn’t move anymore. “And I’m glad for what he gave me; you.”

His anger dissipated. His need to scream and shout faltered.

“It hurts to see you like this,” his mom whispered.

Closing his eyes, Jonas wiped away tears that had escaped him. “I wish I could talk to you,” he said quietly. “But I can’t.”

“That’s alright.” She reached out and wiped away another tear from his cheek. “Just know that I’m here for you when you’re ready to talk.”

All he could do in response was nod.


	3. A Quiet Life for Someone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't forgotten about this story! Here is the third chapter. Please know I wrote this story before season 3 came out. Thank you for sticking with my story! And thank you, LittleBookOwl, for editing this for me!

After his mother’s visit, Jonas hadn’t been in the mood to see anyone.

Laying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, he tried to understand how he had ended up here exactly, in this psychiatric ward in this psychiatric hospital, in an unknown world. He tried to think of the exact moment in time where it had all gone wrong. He used to think it was his father’s suicide, on June the twenty-first, that had started it all, but now he knew that he was wrong. Everything had started going wrong a long, long time before that.

Perhaps the origin of all this mess lay way back in the year nineteen twenty-one.

There were a lot of things Jonas had been excruciatingly wrong about. He used to think that Noah was the one he needed to stop. He used to think that if he could prevent him from executing his plan, he could prevent everything else. Wrong. Then he thought that if he could stop his father from killing himself, he could stop everything from happening. Again, he was wrong.

Perhaps it was Adam he needed to stop.

Or perhaps that was wrong, too.

In any case, there were different ways of stopping Adam from doing whatever the hell it was he meant to do. Perhaps he should stay here, in this mental institution. Then he could never become Adam and then Martha would never die. Perhaps that was the decision Jonas needed to make in order to save everyone, but then Adam would still exist. Somehow. Somewhere.

Here.

As long as _he_ existed, Adam existed.

Perhaps his solution needed to be more radical than he ever dared to think.

Absently, Jonas brushed his fingers across the scar around his neck. Perhaps he should have let adult Elisabeth hang him. Perhaps if he had died that day, everything would have stopped going so horribly wrong. Perhaps everything would be all right again and everyone would be happy.

Perhaps.

_Perhaps._

There were too many variables that played a part in this game.

Jonas’ head began to hurt. Rolling onto his side, he stared at the decrepit wall instead of the ceiling. There was a crack in the wall, he noticed, and he liked to imagine that crack opening and swallowing him whole. If he stopped existing, would everyone be happier? They would be in his world, because people would stop dying. People would even stop being dead in the first place.

His thoughts always brought him back to that moment Adam shot Martha. In the end, it was all about her. Everything he did, he did for her. Everything he tried, he did in order to try and save her. If he couldn’t do that, then there was no point. If he couldn’t save her, then damn everyone else.

Someone knocked on his door.

Jonas didn’t know how long he’d been lying in bed for, staring at nothing and no longer thinking about anything, because that was simply easier. Turning, he found the last person he had expected standing in the doorway; Franziska. She looked at him with curious eyes, as if she couldn’t understand why he had lain in bed all day, which Jonas supposed was a good thing. Ignorance was bliss, right?

What would she do if she found out that, in another world, the apocalypse had happened, and her younger sister led a group of survivors through black days? What would she do if she found out her sweet, innocent sister ordered those same group of survivors to hang innocent people for trespassing? What would she do if she found out that her little sister had tried to hang him? Would she even care?

Pushing himself into a sitting position, Jonas groaned, his head still hurting. “What do you want?”

“I heard what you and the other idiot did.” Franziska strolled into the room. First, she halted before the desk, messing with a few unused papers and pencils and then, after finding nothing of interest there, moved to stand by the window, gazing outside. “Is this the first time you did something you weren’t supposed to do?”

“Are you angry that we read your file?” Jonas rubbed a hand across his tired face and sighed. He wasn’t in the mood for this meaningless chatter.

“I’m not angry,” she said. “I’m surprised. It’s usually Bartosz who comes up with those stupid ideas, but he said this one was yours.”

“Does it matter?”

She turned and looked at him. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

He felt too tired for riddles, and his head hurt too much. “What are you talking about?”

“That I heard those noises, too.”

There was nothing but belief in her bright green eyes and her conviction was nearly enough to convince Jonas that she was telling the truth, but then he remembered what he’d read in her file. “How can you be sure?” he asked. “You experienced hallucinations after–”

“And you were psychotic,” Franziska interrupted. “I heard those noises _after_ I went clean, you idiot.”

Jonas stood, needed a moment until the room stopped spinning, and then took a step towards her. She didn’t shy away from his gaze. “Why are you doing this?” he demanded to know. “Why are you trying to convince a psychotic patient that he isn’t imagining noises at all?”

“Do _you_ think you’re psychotic?” she shot back.

With a frustrated sigh, he turned away from her and wished her gone. He would take her by the shoulders and physically push her out of his room, but he had a feeling Franziska would only go ahead and break his fingers. She was fierce like that, in both worlds apparently. In any world, probably.

“If you’re clean, then why are you still here?” he asked.

“Because,” she started, unfazed by Jonas’ brute question, “I like being here.” A lie, obviously. No-one liked being hospitalized in a ward of a psychiatric hospital. Brushing her long hair back, she stepped towards the bed and dropped down on the mattress. “It’s better than being home where my parents barely speak to each other. I think that’s something you’re familiar with.”

He was, unfortunately.

“Anyway, I came by because Martha didn’t dare to.” She smiled smugly, as if she knew things no-one else did. She probably did. “That girl is madly in love with you. You know that, right?”

Jonas didn’t indulge her with an answer.

“And you know Bartosz is in love with Martha, right?”

He would have rolled his eyes if his head didn’t hurt so much.

“I would do something about that, if I were you.” She stood, straightened imaginary creases from her shirt, and walked towards the door. Finally. Jonas wished he had a lock on his door so he could prevent anyone else from bothering him. “You three are a ticking time-bomb, if you ask me. Drama waiting to happen.”

“Thank you for your delightful insights.” Jonas’ voice dripped with sarcasm. “Can you just go now?”

Franziska glanced at him over her shoulder. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but this new Jonas…” She chuckled softly. “I like him.”

The living room was empty.

Jonas sat down on the couch and stared at a blank TV-screen. He could have an easy life here if he accepted that he was stuck here, in this life. After doing what everyone expected him to do, after taking his pills, after opening up to Dr. Doppler, after letting go of the idea that the cave offered a way through time, he might be allowed to go home. He might get a second chance at forming a proper relationship with his mother. She cared about him, more than he’d given her credit for, so perhaps he should stop being so angry with her all the time and accept that life hadn’t gone as he wished it had gone.

If there was no time-travel in this world, if there was no Noah and no Adam, then maybe he could be with Martha. Wasn’t that all that he wanted? Wasn’t that why he had willingly stepped into this madness? To get a chance at saving her and being with her? Perhaps they could live the life that they both wished for.

As if on cue, she appeared beside him, gently sitting down beside him, with her shoulders slightly slumped and her gaze fixed on the floor. Jonas stared at her, trying to find all the differences between her and the girl he had known all his life back in his world, but found that there were none. She had the same brown eyes, the same red lips, the same dimples in her cheeks when she smiled, the same wrinkles around her eyes when she laughed.

Because she was _her_. She was _Martha._

Franziska’s words echoed through his head.

“Are you in love with me?” he asked.

Martha’s dark eyes snapped up to meet his, caught off guard, confused.

Jonas gave her a moment to think about his question.

And another.

“Are you?” he asked when she remained quiet.

She smiled then, and Jonas felt something warm and soft shift inside his chest.

“Of course, I am,” she said softly, that smile of hers unfaltering. It was a smile reserved only for him. “Have you only realised now?”

He kissed her then, without hesitation, without thinking. His hands carded through her hair and Jonas let himself be surrounded by everything that was Martha. He kissed her, and she kissed him back, and Jonas wanted this moment to last forever. Didn’t he deserve to be happy? Didn’t she deserve to be happy?

When their kiss ended, their need for air too strong, Martha was still smiling. Jonas couldn’t stop a smile from breaking free across his face either, and who cared? With his hands still brushing through her hair, the scent of her citrus-shampoo filling his nose, he pressed his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. There was so much he wanted to tell her, but words were failing him.

Someone cleared his throat, demanding their attention.

“I see it finally happened.” It was Magnus who stood behind the couch with a highly amused look on his face. “Can you please stop licking my sister’s face now?” He jumped across the couch and Jonas had no other choice but to scoot aside as the eldest Nielsen forced his way in between them. “I can’t wait to see dad’s face when I tell him a boy has been sticking his tongue in his little girl’s mouth.”

“Stop it, Magnus,” Martha bit at him.

“Face it, sis.” Magnus was positively glowing. “I got leverage over you now.”

Martha angrily crossed her arms before her chest and shook her head in annoyance.

“Now,” Magnus turned his attention to Jonas, “do I need to give you _the talk?_ ”

Jonas opened his mouth to reply, to make a witty response – or hope for a witty response – but Martha beat him to it. “What gives you the right to give Jonas _the talk_ when you don’t even have the balls to talk to the girl you like?”

Magnus looked unimpressed. “You’re really losing it now,” he said. “Those pills you’re taking are making you see things that aren’t really there.”

Martha punched his arm.

“Goddammit!” Magnus groaned and rubbed the sore spot. “What is it with you and violence?”

“It’s the only way to make you see sense.” Martha grinned.

It was strange to see her like this, like she had no burden pressing down on her shoulders. Jonas still didn’t know enough of this world to understand what she was going through. Her younger brother was dead, murdered, but had his murderer been caught? If not, could Martha ever find closure? Or even worse, what if they did know who had killed Mikkel and it was someone they knew? Magnus might be laughing and joking, but it was all pretend. Jonas could see that now, and he didn’t understand how he hadn’t seen it before. Magnus’ smile never reached his eyes, not really, and his jokes were sharp, verging on cruel, because that was his way of lashing out. Martha accepted it, though, because she knew better than anyone how he felt.

Martha’s laughter was pretend, too. Jonas noticed that her voice was too loud when she spoke to her brother. She kept hitting him, too, never hard enough to hurt him, but always hard enough to make sure that he kept his distance.

His attention slipped to the long sleeves of her shirt.

It seemed he was the only person she allowed close enough to touch her. Jonas would feel honoured if that knowledge didn’t also make him feel sad.

They sat there for another hour, talking and joking and smiling and laughing, but never treading sensitive subjects, and that was okay. Jonas found that he was enjoying himself and he could see that Martha was enjoying herself, too. For a while, they could forget where they were. They could just sit and talk and forget about everything that had happened that caused them to be here in the first place.

For an hour, they were just three teenagers hanging around.

For an hour, they were free.

They lay in bed.

Martha’s hand carded through his hair. Her face was only inches away from his, and Jonas wanted nothing more than to close the distance between them – and he did. Their kiss started slow, thoughtful, but quickly transformed into something more, something fast and passionate. His eyes fluttered shut and Jonas’ hands brushed against the bare skin of her back, underneath her shirt. Martha’s long hair fell across her shoulders and tickled his cheeks. Jonas couldn’t help but chuckle, and Martha smiled.

She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. His hands moved further up her back, across soft, perfect skin, and then removed her shirt, pulling it over her head and throwing it aside. Martha sat unmoving on top of him and folded her arms around her stomach, a blush creeping up her neck and cheeks. Her skin there felt warm.

Jonas pushed himself into a sitting position, removed his own shirt, and kissed her again. When her hands slid down his bare chest, he shivered.

“Jonas,” she sighed, out of breath.

“Is this okay for you?” He folded a lock of brown hair behind her ear. Her lips were swollen from kissing him. “I don’t want to go too fast.”

She smiled again, warm and genuine, and Jonas brushed his thumb across her bottom lip. This was an image he wanted to capture forever. These feelings were the kind he wanted to remember until the day he died. Martha dipped her head down and captured his lips again, humming into his mouth, and Jonas thought his chest was going to burst with exhilaration.

He wanted to tell her that he loved her, but as their kiss broke and he parted his lips to say those three short, but meaningful words, he caught sight of another girl standing across the room, with familiar brown hair and familiar brown eyes. Jonas’ grip on Martha tightened, wanting to hold her as close as possible, wanting to shield her and protect her, but shock made his muscles go slack.

“Jonas?” Martha asked, concerned.

His breath stuttered inside his chest.

The girl across the room exhaled sharply. “Is that all I meant to you?” She was Martha, too. She was _his_ Martha, and she looked upset. Her skin was pale with anger and her hands were balled into two tight fists. The air around her vibrated. “Am I that replaceable?”

Nausea unsettled his stomach. Jonas thought he was going to throw up as one Martha sat on the bed with him, wearing nothing but her underwear, the silver scars on her arms and thighs illuminated beneath the pale moonlight streaming into his room, and another Martha stood by the door, her white shirt slowly turning red as blood dripped from a bullet-hole in her stomach.

“That’s it?” Martha cried as she pressed a hand to her bleeding stomach. “You’re just giving up on me?”

He would answer her if he didn’t fear he would scream if he parted his lips.

“Who is she, Jonas?” Martha crawled closer towards him. She reached out to him, but Jonas pushed her hand away.

“It’s wrong,” he gasped.

“In this world it isn’t,” Martha argued.

“How could you just leave me?” His Martha threw the door shut behind her, the force of the blow causing the entire room to shake, and in just three strides, she stalked towards his bed. She grabbed hold of his arms, her bloodstained fingers bruising him, and shook him. “I thought you loved me?” Tears streamed down her face – tears as red as blood.

“I’m sor–”

She didn’t let him finish his apology. Her fingers folded around his throat, squeezing. Jonas gasped for air that never reached his lungs and grabbed hold of her wrists, but he couldn’t bring himself to shove her away, out of fear that he would hurt her. He never meant to hurt her. He never meant for her to be caught in the middle of this mess.

“ _Martha,_ ” he rasped.

Her brown eyes were almost black with fury.

And then he woke up.

Sweat trickled down his forehead.

With a heaving chest, he threw aside his blanket and stood, the cold tiles beneath his feet helping him wake up. The room was dark, but he didn’t dare switch on his nightlight, too afraid that he would still see things that couldn’t possibly be. Instead, he walked up to the window, pressed his forehead against the cool glass, and stared at the black night sky. There was a full moon reflecting enough light to make it possible to see the trees of Winden’s Forest in the distance.

It was a dream. It had just been a _dream_.

Jonas focused on his breathing – in and out, in and out – and told himself that it meant nothing, that it was just his own mind playing tricks on him, but who was he kidding? Certainly not himself. The moment he had toyed with the idea of staying, he had known it was wrong. Staying was not an option.

He needed to find a way back.

He would need help if he wanted to escape this psychiatric ward.

It was only a matter of _who_ he would ask for help. Martha wasn’t an option. Since that dream yesterday, he had been avoiding her. He couldn’t look at her without seeing her T-shirt drenched in blood. He couldn’t look at her without feeling guilt crush his lungs, because he had considered, only for a few hours, to stay with her in this world. It had been wrong, and he needed to distance himself from her if he wanted to stay determined.

Perhaps Franziska could help him. She already knew of his desire to return to the cave. She knew he had heard noises coming from the tunnels and what those noises meant to him. She said she had heard those noises, too, though Jonas wasn’t sure if he should believe her or not. He didn’t trust her, wasn’t even sure he _liked_ her, and the idea of going with her into the forest didn’t sit well with him. That meant she wasn’t an option.

That left only one other person. He wasn’t his first choice, because Jonas had drifted too far from Bartosz to know for sure if he could still count on him, but he was the only sensible option. They were friends, or had been friends anyway, and whether Jonas liked to admit it or not, Bartosz was the sort of person who probably knew the entire lay-out of this building by heart.

Bartosz sat alone in the living room, which was why Jonas had decided now was the right time to approach him. He was playing a game on the PlayStation, his attention intently focused on the TV-screen, the remote-control creaking between his fingers as he pushed the buttons too hard. Jonas sat down beside him and thought about what he’d read in his file. ‘ _His moods often swing, making it difficult to predict his behaviour, and he often portrays intense displays of anger.’_ The remote-control seemed close to breaking. For one second, he thought about making a comment, but then he remembered what he’d read in his own file and decided to trust his friend more than what Peter Doppler had written.

“Do you want to play a game?” Bartosz asked without looking away from the screen. It was a fighting game, two characters beating the shit out of each other, and Bartosz was winning.

“No,” he answered. “I actually wanted to ask you something.”

“No, _goddammit_ ,” Bartosz cursed as his character got hit particularly hard. “What do you want to ask?”

It was a risk, but Jonas snatched the control out of Bartosz’ hands and paused the game. It earned him an angry ‘ _hey’_ and for a moment he thought Bartosz was going to punch him in the face and steal the control right back, but all he did was roll his eyes and mutter another curse-word under his breath.

“Couldn’t you wait five more minutes?” he asked. “I was winning.”

“It’s important,” Jonas said.

Bartosz turned his head and stared at him with annoyance in his light brown eyes. “All right then, you’ve got my attention.”

“First you need to promise not to freak out.” Jonas threw the control aside, to the other side of the couch where Bartosz couldn’t reach it. Then he squared his shoulders and stared right back at his friend. It was his eyes, Jonas realised, that set him apart from the young Tiedemann he had grown up with back in his world. Everything else was the same, but those light brown eyes were different. Sharper. “You need to know that I’m not delusional.”

Bartosz’s gaze narrowed. “O-kay.”

“I need to get to the cave.” The words left his mouth so quickly he wasn’t sure Bartosz had understood them correctly, but then he righted his back, leaned towards him, and looked at him as if he were exactly that which he’d told him he wasn’t; delusional. Psychotic.

“Jonas–” Bartosz started.

“Listen to me,” he argued, unwilling to let his friend finish that thought. “You’ve probably noticed that I’m different. That’s because I don’t belong here. I swear to you, Bartosz, I’m not insane and this isn’t another psychosis. I really need to get to the cave, and I need your help.”

“Why the cave?”

“Do you think I’m crazy?” Jonas knew what he sounded like, could hear the desperation in his own voice, could hear the tautness to his words, and he hoped Bartosz could look past it.

“It’s hard not to think you’re crazy when you’re looking at me with crazy eyes,” Bartosz said.

Jonas’ eyes fluttered shut without his permission. He inhaled sharply and tried to think of what he could say that would convince Bartosz that this was a good idea – or, well, not a good idea per se, but not a _bad_ one either. “What have you got to lose?” When he opened his eyes again, he smiled deviously and, for a moment, he felt like his fourteen-year-old-self again, never up to any good with his best friend. “You’ll be with me. You can keep an eye out for me.”

Bartosz was starting to adjust to the idea. “What will you do when we get there?”

“Explore,” Jonas replied, which wasn’t even that big of a lie. If all went according to plan and if whatever gods were out there had his back for once, he would never return to this place again. He would go home, find a way to stop Adam and save Martha, and by extent, everyone else.

“All right.” A grin broke free on Bartosz’ face. “But only because I had a blast the other night when we broke into Doppler’s office. It was fun doing something bad with you again.”

Relief flooded his veins.

“Besides,” Bartosz gave him a push so he could reach for the control of the PlayStation, “It’ll be nice to be away from this hellhole for a while. Now, are you gonna join me for a game or not?”

The corners of his lips twisted upwards. “Sure.”

Avoiding Martha was more difficult than he’d originally thought it would be. He stayed in his room for the rest of the day, sat at his desk and wondered if he should write her a note, but then decided against it. The only person he wanted to explain himself to was Martha, but she was the last person he could face right now.

After their kiss, he wanted nothing more than to spend every minute he had left in this world with her, but that would only make leaving that much harder. He also didn’t want to be cruel. If he were to see her, he would only want to kiss her again, tell her the truth, perhaps ask her to join him, but she wouldn’t understand. She might betray him, thinking she was protecting him, and then he would be stuck here for that much longer. It was a risk he couldn’t take.

That, and he was afraid that if he saw Martha again, he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to leave. He was afraid he would want to stay after all.

And staying wasn’t an option.

All he had to do, was follow Bartosz.

With a flashlight in hand – again, he had no idea where he had found those things, but clearly, they weren’t kept under lock and key – Jonas hurried after his friend across dark hallways, down dark staircases, and past dark, empty waiting rooms. Twice they had needed to find an alternate route, because a night-nurse was doing her check-up rounds.

Jonas’ heart kept skipping a beat each time he heard a noise.

“All right, we’re almost there,” Bartosz whispered as they rounded a corner.

They had reached the main entrance of the building.

The silence surrounding them was deafening. Jonas feared his too-loud breathing would alert someone. He would have thought after traveling through time, after being kidnapped and held against his will, after having been arrested and nearly hung in the future, after having met his deranged elder-self, that sneaking around a psychiatric hospital would do nothing to his nerves, but the opposite was true.

His hand clutched his flashlight to prevent it from shaking.

“We need to go through those doors.” Bartosz pointed his flashlight at a double door that was very clearly locked. “There’s no way to avoid setting off the alarm, so we’re just gonna have to be quick once I’ve managed to wrench them open.”

“What?” Jonas grabbed hold of Bartosz’s upper arm and forced him to turn around and face him.

“I said I had a plan.” Bartosz pulled free his arm. “I never said I had a fool-proof plan.”

Jonas glanced around the area, as if he would spot an alternative, but of course he couldn’t. He might have been hospitalized in this building back in his own world, but this building was different. No hallway was the same. He didn’t know what lay beyond these different doors. He didn’t know any back-exits or staff entrances and he certainly didn’t know how any of them were secured.

He needed to trust Bartosz.

“You’re sure that’s our only way out?” he asked.

“I’m sure,” Bartosz grinned. “Are you ready to run?”

Jonas inhaled sharply and glanced around the area one final time. He thought about Martha sleeping soundly on the third floor, fought the urge to change his mind and go find her, and nodded. His feet burned with anticipation.

“I’m ready.” His grip on the flashlight tightened as they approached the double door. His heart hammered inside his chest.

Bartosz kneeled and dug deep into the pocket of his jeans for a new paperclip and hairpin while Jonas silently willed him to hurry. He wanted to leave this place sooner rather than later, wanted to go to the cave and find a way home. To do what, he didn’t know. He hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. Stopping Adam from killing Martha, _his_ Martha, was his main objective, but not a hair on his head knew yet how he could achieve that.

“Almost,” Bartosz mumbled.

Jonas held his breath.

There was a soft click, and a grin broke free across Bartosz’s face.

Someone cleared her throat behind them, and Jonas’ stomach knotted together.

Bartosz jumped up on his feet and spun around.

“The way I see it, you’ve got two options here,” Franziska said, her light green eyes vibrant as the light from their flashlights shone onto her face. She didn’t even squint her eyes. “Either you tell me what the hell you two idiots are doing or I’m screaming all the air from my lungs.”

Jonas resisted the desire to throw his flashlight at her face.

“Well?” she pressed on when no-one replied.

The way he saw it, there were two options; those Franziska had given them. They could indulge her, tell her that they were planning to escape, and hope that she would let them leave without protest. Or they could stay silent and watch her scream until someone found them. She would do that, Jonas knew. She was deceitful like that.

Or he could offer her a third option. “We’re going to the cave,” he said, ignoring Bartosz’s protests beside him. “Come with us.”

This time, her eyes did narrow to slits.

“What are you doing?” Bartosz asked angrily.

“Saving our plan,” he murmured.

“Why are you going to the cave?” Franziska walked over to them and crossed her arms in front of her chest. A pinched expression filled her face, like she didn’t believe them. “To try and kill yourself again or are you finally convinced you’re not crazy?”

Funnily enough, Jonas liked her brutal honesty. “When did _you_ hear those noises?”

Bartosz looked confused. “You heard noises coming from the cave, too?”

“The day you got out of solitary confinement,” Franziska answered.

The day he arrived here by mistake. She might be telling the truth after all.

“I need to know what those noises meant.” It was a risk, a _huge_ risk, but he had no other choice but to take it. The longer they stood there, the higher the chance that they were caught. They needed to get out of there. Now. “I’m not insane. Those noises mean something. Don’t you want to know?”

Half a truth was still more convincing than half a lie.

She snatched the flashlight from his hand. “All right, I’m coming along for the ride.”

Franziska stepped up to the double doors. Jonas was just about to ask her not to open them, not to set off the alarm yet, when she turned and flashed them a giant grin. “This is your lucky night, idiots, because I happen to know the code that turns off the alarm. Being the therapist’s daughter has advantages, you see.” She stepped over towards a keypad Jonas hadn’t even noticed before, ticked in a few numbers, and pushed open the doors without as much as a sigh rippling through the air. “Let’s go.”

It was a two-hour walk to the cave, but luckily the nights weren’t too cold this time of the year. They were all wearing a sweater and had the hoods drawn over their heads, not to protect them against the chilly air, but to make sure that if someone saw them walking towards the forest at one in the morning, they wouldn’t recognize them.

The first half hour, they walked in silence. Then Bartosz started talking about videogames, but neither he nor Franziska cared about that topic, so they fell silent again.

Jonas kept think about Martha and hoped she wouldn’t notice his absence until tomorrow morning, when he’d be long gone. He hoped none of the staff at the hospital would notice their disappearance until it was too late. He also wondered what he would do once they reached the cave. Bartosz and Franziska couldn’t join him in there. He couldn’t risk them tagging along and ending up in his world. Dammit, he would need to come up with an explanation as to why he wanted to explore the cave on his own, but he suspected Bartosz wasn’t going to let him out of his sight.

Franziska came to walk beside him. She was smart enough to have figured out that something was amiss from the moment he left that isolation room. Honestly, Jonas could see why Magnus liked her so much. She was fierce and intelligent, strong-willed and confident.

“Are you ever going to tell us what you’re really hoping to find in the cave?” Clearly, she had waited for this moment, because her gaze was fixed on Bartosz’s back, as if waiting for a reaction while hoping for none. When Bartosz didn’t turn around, because he couldn’t hear them talk, she linked an arm with him and pointed her flashlight into his face. “This isn’t just about figuring out what those noises are, is it?”

Jonas groaned and pushed her hand down, his vision momentarily gone. If it weren’t for her arm guiding him, he would have already stumbled and fallen.

“Do you remember who found you the night you tried to hang yourself?” she asked then.

The question caught him off guard.

Franziska was fierce and intelligent, strong-willed and confident, and _coarse_.

“He did,” she said, answering her own question by pointing her flashlight at Bartosz who walked six yards ahead of them. “You were…unhinged for weeks, talking about time-travel and how you could save your father if you could just get to the cave. No-one thought it possible, but you managed to escape.”

A shiver ran down Jonas’ spine.

It wasn’t difficult imagining what the Jonas from this world had gone through after his father’s suicide, because he had gone through the same. Of course, he hadn’t gone into a complete psychosis, but he had been hospitalized, too, and he _had_ seen his father on more than one occasion after his death. His image had haunted him, black oil covering his skin while a pained look filled his face.

“Bartosz hadn’t been admitted to the nut-house yet, but somehow he found out that you’d gone missing. He left in the middle of the night and hurried to the cave.” Franziska was staring at him from the corner of her eye, observing his reactions. “If it weren’t for him, you’d be dead.”

“I don’t remember,” was all he said.

“You really aren’t faking that, are you?” she asked. “That whole amnesia-thing?”

He stole the flashlight from her hand, unwilling to discuss his alternate’s suicide attempt. “Who killed Mikkel?” he asked. It probably didn’t matter, certainly not if he were to return to his own world soon, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Martha and curiosity just got the better of him. As it often did lately.

Much to his surprise, Franziska stayed quiet and unhooked her arm from his.

“You don’t remember that either?” she asked quietly.

Bartosz looked over his shoulder at them and told them to keep up.

“Tell me,” Jonas tried.

Franziska sighed and looked at the ground beneath their feet. It was littered with dead leaves. They had entered the forest a few minutes ago and the air around them smelled like rain. Jonas would miss that if he ever got out of Winden; the rain.

They followed the old train tracks.

Soon, they would reach the cave.

“It was Helge,” Franziska answered.

Jonas halted. “Your grandfather?”

“Keep walking,” Franziska warned.

The truth was that Jonas didn’t feel all that surprised. Helge had been a steady figure in Winden’s history, so it was only logical he was of importance in this world, too, whether it be good or bad. “Is that why you haven’t left the psychiatric hospital?” he asked. “Because of what your grandfather did?”

“We still don’t know what got into him.” Franziska’s voice had changed. Her confidence was gone and fragility had taken its place. Jonas wasn’t used to seeing her like this. “My grandfather has always been…odd, but the months before he killed Mikkel, he kept talking about time and how he needed to fix it. Then one day, he took Mikkel and hit him on the head with a rock. Like someone did to him when he was young.” She sighed and shook her head, memories clearly flashing through her mind. “It’s like time repeated itself, but worse.”

Jonas wanted to reach out to her and take her hand, but he didn’t think Franziska would appreciate it. Was this why she believed him? Was this why she _wanted_ to believe him? Did she hope to find a way to undo what her grandfather did?

“I’m lucky,” she continued. “Martha and Magnus don’t blame me for what my grandfather did, but everyone else…” She inhaled sharply and looked at him with brutal honesty in her eyes for the first time since he had known her. And quite possibly for the last time. “That’s why I haven’t left yet. I’m not ready yet to face everyone else.”

Bartosz halted. “We’re here.”

Jonas stared at the cave stretching out before them, with a dark, gaping, threatening mouth luring them inside. In this world, there was an old, red chair that lay abandoned to the left. To the right, there was a rusty old bicycle Jonas wouldn’t want to touch out of fear of getting lockjaw. The wind whipped around their ears and rain began to drizzle down, soaking their hair. The air felt different here. It was heavier to breathe in.

“Why are we doing this again?” Franziska asked, unsure of the idea of entering the cave.

Turning back was no option. Jonas stepped forward, past Franziska and past Bartosz, and with the flashlight secure in his hand, entered the cave. From the rustling of leaves behind him, he could tell the others were following him. He let them.

Truth be told, he wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking for. A sign, perhaps. A way that would allow him to go back to his world. With some luck, maybe, he would find a tunnel that would lead him to a heavy metal door, but there was no guarantee for success, because the tunnels back at home only led through time, not space. Jonas needed to hope, though, needed to cling to this feeling of anticipation.

Or perhaps he should accept the fact that he was stuck here. _Would that be such a bad thing?_ that small, soft voice in the back of his head asked again. Martha was here, alive and well. He could be with her, build something with her, and he wouldn’t need to feel guilty for longing for this. There would be nothing wrong with him. The mere thought of _‘I kissed my aunt’_ had his stomach twist into a knot, but that wasn’t the case here. Mikkel wasn’t his father. Martha wasn’t his aunt. Life didn’t seem to mess with him as it did back in his world.

“This cave has always given me the creeps,” Bartosz muttered as he let his flashlight shine across the moist walls. Water dripped onto the ground here and there.

Occasionally, the ground beneath their feet trembled. It was barely sensible, but Jonas felt it. Every time, he halted and held his breath, waiting, _expecting_ , but nothing happened. The others didn’t even seem to notice.

“What the hell is this?” Franziska asked then, curiosity ringing in her voice.

Jonas turned and his attention instantly locked onto the strange object she held carefully in her hand. She had picked it up from the ground and brushed some dirt off of the metallic casing. It was round, a perfect sphere, and shone brilliantly underneath the light of the flashlight.

Jonas’ heart stuttered inside his chest.

That was his way home.

Bartosz snatched it from her hands.

“Hey!” Franziska protested.

She wasn’t given a chance to snatch it back.

Bartosz turned away from her. “It looks alien.”

All Jonas wanted to do, was warn him not to drop it. The mere thought of the orb falling and shattering into a thousand little pieces had his chest contract with fear. His throat turned dry.

“Be careful,” he said. Taking a step forward, towards Bartosz, Jonas extended his hand, but the young Tiedemann didn’t seem interested in handing over the device. The mere thought of being able to return home had his heart flutter inside his chest, with relief, but also because he threatened to break at the idea of leaving behind Martha and returning to a world where she wasn’t in it.

“Is that why you wanted to come here?” Bartosz tossed the sphere into the air and caught it again.

Jonas bit down on his tongue and forbade himself from throwing himself at his friend to steal the device from his hands. It was a risk he couldn’t take.

“What is that thing?” Franziska asked again.

“It looks like something to hide something in.” Bartosz let the sphere roll around in his hands, looking for a way to open it, pushing down on the metallic case. Jonas took a step forward, but found Bartosz taking a step back again. “Drugs or something. Is that why you wanted to come here? Is that something you do now?”

An exasperated sigh left his lips. “Don’t be stupid,” he snapped, the comment slipping away from him before he could consider the possible consequences. Jonas cursed himself as he watched Bartosz’s eyes narrow, clearly insulted. His hands gripped the sphere even tighter. “Be careful, please.”

“I’m done with your condescendence, you know,” Bartosz bit at him.

Jonas swallowed whatever new comment fought its way out. “I’m sorry,” he said instead. After counting to three, giving Bartosz a moment to calm down again, he stretched out a hand. “Can I please see it now? It’s important.”

Bartosz stared at him with narrowed eyes. “Tell me what it is first.”

“Just hand it over, you idiot,” Franziska flared.

“No.” Bartosz turned around and started walking towards the exit of the cave. “I’m sick and tired of everyone acting like I’m an idiot, of everyone expecting me to do whatever the hell everyone tells me to do. I’m not a lapdog.”

Jonas rolled his eyes, but Bartosz couldn’t see – which is why he’d rolled them in the first place. His annoyance directed at his best friend – former best friend? – grew exponentially. Why did he have to pick this fight now? Was he that desperate to draw all the attention to himself?

“No-one says you’re a lapdog, Bartosz,” Jonas said.

Bartosz spun around so suddenly he nearly crashed into him. “But you do think I’m stupid.” Before Jonas could reply, before he could even think of a reply that wouldn’t offend him, Bartosz shone his flashlight directly into Jonas’ eyes, momentarily blinding him. “Is that why you’ve been kissing Martha behind my back? Because you think I’m too stupid to notice?”

Somewhere behind him, Franziska snorted loudly. “Are you two really going to get into that fight right now? Here?”

Bartosz stalked away from them again, but Jonas couldn’t instantly follow him, his sight not yet having returned completely. Dark spots danced before his eyes and threw off his balance. Only when Franziska plucked the flashlight from his hand and curled an arm through his, did Jonas feel secure enough to walk again, Franziska guiding him through the darkness.

“Bartosz!” she called out. “Wait!” Then, with a harsh but slightly smug whisper only Jonas could hear, “I told you it was drama waiting to happen.”

“I know, I know,” he mumbled.

Bartosz was waiting for them at the mouth of the cave. “You’re a really sucky friend, Jonas Khanwald,” he vented. Jonas blinked, his vision finally returning, and saw that he was genuinely hurt, could see it behind his light brown eyes. It shimmered just beneath the surface. “If this ball is so goddamn important to you, why don’t you go find it?” He lifted his hand, ready to throw the sphere as far away as possible.

Jonas parted his lips to shout, to demand that he didn’t, but then another voice demanded all of them to stop.

“ _Shit_ ,” Franziska muttered.

“Does anyone care to explain–” Peter Doppler stepped into the mouth of the cave, and Jonas couldn’t see his expression, but judging by the tone of his voice, he wasn’t pleased, “–what the hell is going on here?”

For some reason, he unhooked his arm from Franziska’s. There were a few excuses he could fire at the psychiatrist to explain why they were here in the middle of the night, but none of them sounded very convincing in his own mind. Besides, what could they really say? They had broken a dozen rules the moment they had left their rooms. This little excursion was going to have consequences and Jonas wasn’t sure he was ready to face them. The last thing he wanted, was another visit by his mother.

“Give that here,” Peter ordered, wanting the sphere from Bartosz who handed it over without objection. Jonas watched, with a tight feeling in his chest, as Peter momentarily observed the device, but then dismissed it. For now. “We’re going to walk back to my car now,” he said angrily. “I don’t want to hear a single word coming from any of you. Is that understood?”

No-one replied.

Dejectedly, having no other choice, Jonas followed him out of the cave and through the woods.

Bartosz walked first, with a quick step, anger and hurt still very clearly reflected in his eyes. He refused to look at Jonas, no matter how much Jonas wished him to. Franziska walked behind him, with her hands buried deep into the pockets of her jeans and her hoodie drawn over her head again. She didn’t look up from the ground either.

Peter Doppler walked last. Jonas stayed close to him, not wanting to lose sight of the sphere in his hand. It wasn’t that he feared Doppler would drop it and leave it behind. No, his biggest fear was that something would happen, that the sphere would activate, light up, buzz, _anything_ , and that he would miss his chance to return home. That device was his only hope. It was so close, within reach, and yet there was nothing he could do.

Maybe he should just go for it. If he was fast enough, he could steal the sphere from Peter’s grip and make a run for it. If he was fast enough, he could be back in his world before the sun peeked over the horizon.

But if he wasn’t fast enough, he might be stuck here forever.

As he let out a heavy sigh, Peter Doppler threw him a quick glance. It was obvious what he was thinking; _you got yourself into this mess_ , and he was right. Jonas would simply have to find a way of getting himself _out_ of it.


	4. A Quiet Life for Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is unbeta'd, so I apologize if there are mistakes. It is time to finish this story. The fifth and final chapter is also written, so I'll update that one soon, too!

Dark clouds ominously gathered over Winden’s Forest, filled with a promise of something more. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled and the trees began to whisper as the wind grew stronger. Jonas couldn’t actually hear the leaves rustling, but he liked to imagine the sound of it in his head. He’d always liked the forest, had gone there for long walks with his dad when he’d been younger, gathering chestnuts and acorns he would proudly show to his mom when they got home. Then, when he was older, he’d explored deeper parts of the forest with his friends, to play games and challenge each other with difficult tasks. And eventually, he’d discovered the cave.

Everyone in Winden knew the cave was a special place, but Jonas could never have imagined that it would have controlled his life like this.

Somewhere in the distance, a lightning bolt struck across the horizon, and Jonas counted the seconds until thunder rumbled. It was a meaningless pastime, a simple way of occupying his mind, because he’d grown tired of overthinking what had happened last night, what had gone wrong. Biting on the nail of his thumb, a nasty habit he’d overcome a few years ago, but had recently picked up again, Jonas tried not to think about Bartosz or Franziska or Martha.

It was useless. Balling his hands into fists, to stop himself from biting his nails which were already painfully short, Jonas sighed. His thoughts kept circling back to Bartosz’ hurt expression as he’d accused him of kissing Martha and then to that moment in his own world where he’d pushed him on the ground for the same reason. They had fought and if Martha hadn’t stopped them, there was no telling what Bartosz would have done to him. Back then, he hadn’t realized it yet, but he’d deserved it for kissing his girlfriend and being a lousy friend in general. Even here, in a world he’d only been in for a few days, he had managed to be nothing but a lousy friend.

Rain started pouring from the sky.

An apology was in place, but Jonas didn’t have the faintest clue how to form one. What could he say? I’m sorry for showing up uninvited and kissing the girl you like? I’m sorry for not being the friend you need me to be? If Franziska had been telling the truth last night, then Bartosz had saved his alternate-self’s life and now he’d gone and stabbed him in the back.

For a long time, Jonas had refused to believe it, but it seemed he _was_ getting rather good at screwing things up.

Rain clattered against the window.

Jonas pressed his forehead against the cool glass and exhaled slowly.

After they’d returned, they had all been sent to their rooms. Peter had come to him shortly after, had told him how disappointed he felt, how he seemed to be relapsing instead of making progress, but Jonas couldn't bring himself to care. All he’d been able to think about was the sphere. Peter had confiscated it, locked it away in his office, and Jonas tried to think of a way of getting it back, but breaking into Peter’s office seemed impossible. The nurses were watching him like hawks, never letting him out of their sight, and Peter had installed an extra lock on his door.

Asking Bartosz’ help was out of the question, too. Bartosz probably didn’t want to see him again any time soon. No, it was better if Jonas stayed away from him. Part of him wanted to mend things with him, but reason told him it would be pointless. Once he got his hands on the sphere, he would leave this world anyway. It was a selfish way of thinking, but Jonas couldn’t bring himself to care. Too much time had passed already, time lost, time he desperately needed if he wanted to mend things back in his own world.

Jonas’ eyes fluttered shut as he focused on the coolness of the glass against his forehead. Perhaps Franziska could help. As Peter’s daughter, she could probably walk in and out of his office any time during the day. Perhaps he could ask her to find the sphere for him, but then he would have to explain to her, in detail, what the sphere meant to him. Franziska seemed like an open-minded girl, but the truth might be too inconceivable even for her.

“Jonas?”

His eyes fluttered open when hearing her voice.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

Martha came to stand beside him and gazed outside for a moment, watching the rain and listening to the wind. Her hair had been pulled back into a messy bun, and Jonas’s gaze was drawn in by her collarbones. She had a vein running there, from her shoulder all the way up her neck. He had to resist the urge to reach out and trace the line.

Straightening his back, Jonas tried to come up with a dozen different reasons as to why he should walk away, but his mind refused to cooperate and no sensible words were coming to him. He wanted to be with her, hold her, feel her, because he loved her. Wasn’t that good enough? Couldn’t that be reason enough for him to stay? Why should he return to a world his older self had failed to save before? And _his_ older self had failed to save? And _his_ older self? The cycle had not been broken before. Who was he to break it now? Perhaps staying was what needed to be decided to keep everyone in his world safe.

“You’re staring,” Martha noted.

He hadn’t been aware that he’d been staring. His first instinct was to cast down his gaze and apologize, but then she turned her dark brown eyes on him, and Jonas felt completely enraptured by them. “I just think you’re beautiful.”

A blush crept up her cheeks and she averted her gaze. “Stop it,” she chuckled.

“I mean it.” He wasn’t sure what got into him, what fuelled him in this moment, but Jonas didn’t care. He didn’t care whether this was right or wrong. Reaching for her hand, curling their fingers together, Jonas remembered that this was the girl he had loved since the first year of high school. He had been in love with her for so long already that he couldn’t remember _not_ being in love with her.

Whatever moment he had hoped for, however, was beyond reach. Martha was staring at him with sadness in her features. Sadness and confusion and possibly a hint of anger.

“Why did you return to the cave?” she asked.

She was the girl who had always been able to see through his lies.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he replied quietly. It was time to tell her the truth, and to accept the fact that while she was the girl he loved, she wasn’t the girl he could be with. His Martha was dead and this Martha wasn’t his to love. No matter how many times he tried to convince himself that this was an option, Jonas knew well enough that he needed to go back to his world. He owed it to his family and friends to at least _try_ and save them. But the girl standing before him also deserved the truth.

“Why are you so obsessed with it?” she asked.

The truth felt ugly. The words seemed to deform in his mouth every time he wanted to speak them. They felt ugly and poisonous, and part of him didn’t want to tell them to her, out of fear that they would taint her. There was no predicting Martha’s reaction. Jonas could barely wrap his head around the truth, so how could he expect a decent response from her? If he told her who he really was and where he came from, she might not be able to accept it, might look at him as if he were crazy, and that might be the last image he would have of her.

Still, wouldn’t that be better than the last image he had of her now? Laying on the floor with a bullet wound in her stomach, gasping for air, suffocating on her own blood?

Sighing, Jonas closed his eyes for a moment and convinced himself that this was the right thing to do. The truth was always better than a lie. He had learned that the hard way.

“I needed to find a way back to my own world,” he explained while he barely dared to look at her, afraid of her reaction. “I’m not crazy, Martha, but you’ve said it yourself; I’m different.”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Jonas could see the muscles to her neck tense and he could feel the air shift between them. It became heavier, more difficult to breathe, electrified by the words he’d just spoken. Martha let her hand slide from his grip, distancing herself from him, but Jonas refused to let her walk away. If this was the last time he was to talk to her, he would not let it end like this. Broken.

“I’m not from this world, Martha. I’m not the Jonas you’ve grown up with. I came here by accident and I need to get back. The sphere we found at the cave is my only way home.”

Tears sprung into her eyes. “Jonas–”

“You have to believe me.”

Martha wiped away a tear that had escaped the corner of her eye. “Can you even hear yourself?” Her voice was barely above a whisper, anguished. She shook her head incredulously, but instead of turning away and making a run for it – Jonas wouldn’t even have blamed her if she did – she took a step closer towards him and placed a warm, soothing hand to his cheek. Her thumb brushed the skin just below his eye. “You’re talking about another world and that sounds pretty crazy to me.”

He leaned into her touch and sighed. “I know what it sounds like,” he said. “I know what it sounds like coming from a guy you know suffers from psychoses, but I’m telling you the truth, Martha. How can I convince you that I’m telling you the truth?”

She inhaled sharply and exhaled slowly. Her hand fell away from his cheek. “Jonas, listen to yourself and tell me honestly–”

“Mikkel wasn’t murdered in my world.” The words left him without his permission. Jonas wasn’t sure what he hoped to achieve with this message, but it got her attention. Completely. Martha stared at him with wide, shocked eyes, her lips having parted as his words slammed into her body like a physical punch. “He disappeared, but he wasn’t murdered. He travelled back in time, like I did. I’ve been to the past and to the future, Martha, and it’s all…” His mind raced to catch up with his own words. There was so much he wanted to tell her, but too little time. She deserved the truth, but the whole truth might be too much. “Something happened, something bad, something _I_ started, and I have to go back to try and fix it. As much as I want to stay, I can’t.”

For a long moment, she remained quiet. Martha stared into his eyes and seemed to search for something. A lie perhaps. Or madness. She would find none of those things. “Why not?” she asked then. “Why can’t you stay here with me?”

His hands curled around hers, his touch soft, and relief flooded his lungs when he found her leaning into his touch. “You’re the only reason I would want to stay, but I can’t.” He wanted to tell her what had happened to his Martha and explain that the idea of losing her a second time crushed him. With a tightness to his chest, his heart beating furiously against his ribcage as if wanting to leap out altogether, Jonas did what he had hoped Martha wouldn’t do; he let go of her and took a step back.

It hurt to see tears shimmering in her eyes, because of him.

“Jonas…” She sounded desolate. “You need help.”

Before he could react, before he could tell her not to worry about him, before he could brush away the tears that were still escaping the corners of her eyes, footsteps sounded behind them, drawing their attention.

A nurse rounded the corner and approached them. “You have a visitor,” she announced.

Jonas wanted to tell her to leave them be, to give them time to talk, because he needed to convince Martha that he wasn’t lying, that he wasn’t crazy, but then his gaze fell on the man who was, without doubt, his visitor. Jonas’ breath got caught inside his chest, shock and disbelief twisting his stomach into a knot, because the man standing in front of him had messy, dark hair, an unkept beard, and a pair of blue eyes he saw in the mirror himself every day.

“Hello, Jonas,” the Stranger said, a polite smile playing around his lips. His bright blue eyes only briefly flitted to Martha, but Jonas couldn’t gage his reaction, couldn’t tell whether he was surprised to see her, pleased, confused, or something else entirely. His expression betrayed nothing.

His mind grinded to a halt, unable to come up with a single response as his older self stood opposite him.

“We need to talk,” the Stranger added.

Without waiting for a response, without pausing to see if Jonas could follow, the Stranger turned and walked away from them, clearly expecting him to follow obediently, but he couldn’t leave Martha behind without another word. Jonas’ attention flicked back to her, but her gaze was fixed on the floor. A few strands of her hair had escaped her messy bun and had fallen in front of her eyes, shielding her from him, and no matter how much Jonas willed her to look up, to lock gazes with him and see his heartache, she didn’t.

Parting his lips to say something, to apologize, to tell her they would continue this conversation later, Jonas found that no sound left him. Perhaps that was for the best – he didn’t want to be caught in a lie. Swallowing heavily, he stared at her for three more seconds, convinced himself that this was for the best, and then followed his older self down the hallway. If he looked back, he might not be able to leave, and he had to leave.

He hurried down the hallway.

At first, Jonas didn’t know what to say to his older self. His mind seemed unable to produce anything productive other than _Martha, Martha, Martha,_ but then his thoughts seemed to catch up with the fact that the Stranger was _here_. When that fact registered, a dozen different questions crashed into his head, each new one filling him with more confusion than the previous one.

“How did you get here?” That was what baffled him most. Jonas tried catching up with his visitor, wanted him to stop and turn and look at him, really _look_ at him, because surely, he must remember that Martha had died only a few days ago? There was nothing in his demeanour that betrayed his feelings, however, and that angered him. Jonas clenched and unclenched his hands at his sides.

The Stranger entered their room and halted. “The apparatus,” he explained, as if that one word was enough for Jonas to understand everything. Slowly, he spun around his axis and let his gaze slide around. A ghost of a smile played around the corners of his lips. “It is exactly as I remember it.”

Jonas closed the door behind him – he had to fight the urge to slam it shut – and then spun around to face his older self with nothing but anger coursing through his veins. “Who cares about this room?” Grabbing hold of his older self’s arm, he forced him to look at him, and a pair of bright blue eyes locked with his own. He used to think they were identical – by all intent and purpose, they _were_ – but he found them different now. The ones staring back at him seemed darker. Burdened. “You knew what Adam planned to do,” he accused. “You knew he was going to kill Martha and you did nothing.”

The Stranger’s smile disappeared instantly. His blue gaze darkened even more. “You were there,” he retorted, unblinking. “Why didn’t _you_ stop him?”

The question felt like a punch to his gut, knocking all the air from his lungs. “I didn’t know,” he gasped. His initial shock quickly made place for enmity, though – a feeling he latched onto with every fibre of his being. Hatred and hostility was easier than sadness. He gave his older self a shove, but he had expected that and barely even moved. That was when his enmity moulded into fury. It twisted and coiled just underneath his skin. “You could have stopped him! You could have saved her!”

“Martha’s death was inevitable,” the Stranger replied coolly.

His calmness, his acceptance, his indifference – it felt utterly incompatible to him. Jonas didn’t recognize the man standing before him, couldn’t understand how he would become him, become this infuriating, aloof, callous stranger. The idea that one day he would remember Martha’s death and not feel his heart break felt surreal. The idea that one day he would think about her terrified gaze as she bled out on the floor of his kitchen and not feel the need to rage and scream felt impossible.

“Inevitable?” he echoed hollowly. His blood began to boil inside his veins. “Did you even _try_ and save her?”

Something flashed behind the Stranger’s eyes then – _good_ – and he grabbed hold of Jonas’ shirt, pulling him closer until their noses touched. They were the same height and yet he somehow managed to look down at his younger self. “That’s all I have been trying to do,” he hissed. His breath swept across Jonas’ face, his blue eyes flashed with outrage. “That’s all you will try to do, but it’ll be pointless, and you have no idea how seething it will make you, how bitter.”

Jonas pushed him away and sucked in a deep, shaky breath. “This is all because of Adam.” His voice sounded tremulous, a little less angry, a little more determined. “He’s the one we need to stop. If you don’t become him, he can’t murder her.”

The Stranger huffed out an empty laugh and shook his head incredulously. “I forgot how naïve I was,” he muttered. Turning away from him, he carded a hand through his hair and closed his eyes for a moment. “I know what you are thinking, Jonas, because all those years ago I thought it myself.”

Jonas hated every word that came out of his mouth.

“You think that if you kill me now, you can stop Adam.”

It felt as if he was in his head, listening to his every thought. It was unnerving and invasive, but the Stranger was right. How could he not be? Everything he had ever felt, the Stranger had felt, too. Every idea flitting through his head, had flitted through his. He had known Martha would die and that there was nothing he could do about it. He had accepted it.

Jonas despised the fact that one day he would know how that would feel.

“Am I wrong?” he asked with a small, hopeful voice.

“You are,” the Stranger answered impatient. “If you kill me now, I cannot become the person that will one day show me how to use the apparatus to come here. Thus I wouldn’t be able to travel to this world to retrieve you. Thus I wouldn’t even be here for you to kill me. Time-travel is an intricate and complex phenomenon, Jonas, and you can’t alter laws simply because–”

He was in no mood to discuss complicated time-travel-theories that might or might not make any sense to him. The skin of his palms hurt from where his nails threatened to break skin.

“And what if I killed myself?” The question blurted from his lips without his permission, but it was a question that had played around his mind for months already.

The Stranger huffed out a breathless, humourless, bitter laugh. “I also forgot how stupid I was.” His laughter died away and he sucked in a deep breath, to steady himself, as if Jonas had told him the best joke he had heard in ages.

With a clenched jaw and lips pressed together, Jonas fought the intense urge to punch his older self in the face – but he didn’t, because he would probably expect it and avoid the hit, a satisfaction Jonas refused to grant him. Was this the man he would become? He was bound to become? A shudder ran down his spine, darting all the way to the tips of his fingers. His limbs shook with fury.

“If you kill yourself, you’ll prevent everything I have done,” the Stranger hypothesised. “Everything I set in motion, everything I stopped. I can’t tell you what would happen if you kill yourself. Maybe everything wrong with our world will turn right, maybe everything right will turn wrong. Maybe the apocalypse won’t happen or maybe it will happen even sooner. In any case, it’s no guarantee that Martha will live if you die.”

With a frustrated grunt, Jonas turned away from him and moved to stand by the window. That nasty headache he’d been suffering from these past few days had returned and now throbbed near the base of his skull. “Alright, alright,” he muttered, dismayed, wanting him to shut up. He pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes, wishing the pain to disappear. “I get it.”

The Stranger hummed. “I know.”

He would have rolled his eyes if his head didn’t hurt so much. “Bring us back to our world then,” he said, wanting this mess to end already. Returning to a world that had ended almost felt more natural than standing in this alternate world, being surrounded by alternate people.

The Stranger glanced up at him from underneath bushy eyebrows. He looked older than he really was, and it made Jonas wonder what else he was to live through in order to end up like him. They were not good prospects.

“The apparatus only offered a one-way-trip,” his older self said. “We need the orb to travel back. If I remember correctly, Peter locked it away in his office. Yes?”

“Yes,” Jonas replied.

“Then that’s where we must go now.” The Stranger turned on his heels and headed for the door, but Jonas had one more question he needed to ask. This might be his final chance to ask it, after all. Calling out his own name, the Stranger halted, the doorknob already in hand.

“You know what I’m gonna ask,” he said.

The Stranger’s blue eyes were impenetrable.

Jonas could barely breathe. “Why can’t I stay?”

He wasn’t sure what the Stranger saw as he looked at him. He wasn’t sure if he saw his tearful eyes, his grief-stricken features or his trembling lips, but even if he couldn’t see, he must remember. He _must_ remember this feeling currently pulsing through his veins. He _must_ remember this question echoing through his head, over and over and over again.

The Stranger looked genuinely sorry. “We don’t belong here, Jonas,” he replied quietly.

His eyes fluttered shut and tears rolled down his cheeks. Jonas knew he was right.

It was time to return home, to let go of the idea that he could stay here, with Martha, and think of everyone else. The apocalypse had happened and while Martha was dead, his friends might not be. They might need him. His mom might need him.

Following his older self out of the room, they made their way across the hall and towards Doppler’s office. The Stranger didn’t look back to see if he was following, but Jonas didn’t mind. In fact, he was grateful for the few moments he was given to collect himself. After wiping away his tears and sucking in a deep, steadying breath, he felt ready to go home.

The door to Doppler’s office stood ajar.

The Stranger paused, looked across his shoulder at his younger self with a knowing look on his face, and pushed open the door.

It was all the warning he got, and Jonas hated his older self for it all the more.

Martha stood by the window. Her arms were wrapped around her middle and she was bathing in sunlight. At the sight of her, Jonas felt all the air he’d just sucked into his lungs evaporate. Her dark brown eyes locked with his and refused to let him go.

“I knew you’d come here,” she said.

_The light above him occasionally flickered in and out of existence. Every time it did, the room was cast in shadows. Jonas knew it was impossible, but those shadows kept growing every time they appeared. They grew larger in shape and louder in sound, but they were never threatening. In the contrary – Jonas wished they would become so big they would swallow him whole and chase away that persistent tightness curling around his chest. He wished they would become so loud they would drown out his incessant circle of thought wearing him down._

_There were only a few things that frightened him since the death of his father._

_Childish things didn’t scare him anymore; curious sounds coming from within the walls, shapeless forms twisting in the dark, spiders crawling behind cupboard doors. They were frivolous. No, what frightened him were the things no-one could see or touch. They existed only in mind. Thoughts. Ideas. What frightened him more than anything was the possibility of being forgotten, of being left in this room with a locked door that would never open again. He wasn’t afraid that he would starve to death or die of thirst. No, he was afraid that everyone he thought loved him would just…_

_Tears pricked in the corners of his eyes when he squeezed them shut. Jonas’ stomach churned at the thought that everyone he thought loved him would just forget about him, that one day they would move on with their lives. They would realise what a burden he was to them, how much he dragged them down and held them back, so they would stop thinking about him. And leave him here, in this hospital, all alone._

_Everyone around him would return to their lives. Bartosz would go back to his parents and either manage his mother’s hotel or start a job at the power plant. Franziska would get what she wanted and save enough money to get out of this town. Magnus would get a job at the police station, and Martha… Jonas’ heart stuttered inside his chest when he thought Martha. She would study hard and become someone that mattered, someone that made a difference in people’s lives. A nurse perhaps. Or a teacher. Knowing that one day she would forget about him, too, had those tears who had previously pricked his eyes roll down the sides of his face._

_He would have wiped them away if he could, but as it was, he lay tied down on a hospital bed, forced to stare at nothing but the flickering light above him. Jonas didn’t know how long he’d been banned to the isolation room. It could have been days or weeks. Time had become something immeasurable to him._

_How he got here was another mystery to him. There was a vague memory of a nurse holding him down, but he wasn’t sure if it was real or not. There were different kinds of images playing around in his head as he tried to remember how he had ended up in this room. One showed a concerned Dr. Doppler kneeling beside him, trying to calm him with soothing words. Another showed a nurse with a bloody lip. Jonas thought he remembered seeing Bartosz standing to the side, his hands shaking with worry, and then there was Martha. Her cheeks had been wet with tears, her skin pale with fear. At least, Jonas thought that had been the case. Everything blurred together in his mind, images and sounds and smells. He did know he’d bitten down on his tongue as others had held him down, desperate to calm him, because he could still taste blood in his mouth._

_In the end, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was here again, strapped down, forced into solitary with nothing but his own thoughts. It was almost as frightening as the idea of being forgotten._

_It was almost as frightening as the knowledge that being forgotten would be for the better._

_The lock of the door turned._

_Jonas picked up his head, blinked away the last of his tears, and watched Dr. Doppler enter his room. He held a try of food in hand, the smell of mashed potatoes, carrots, and chicken making Jonas’ mouth water instantly. For the past few days, for however long he’d been in here, nurses had brought him food, but he’d refused nearly every time. He had either pressed his lips together and turned the other way, or – on the few rare occasions they had unstrapped him – thrown the tray against the wall. Today he was starving, however, and his fingers itched grab hold of the plastic cutlery._

_“Hello, there,” Doppler said, the corners of his lips curling upwards ever so slightly. Whatever he saw, whatever state Jonas was in – he couldn’t be sure, because he hadn’t stood in front of a mirror in a while, but Jonas assumed he looked fucking terrible – seemed to please him. “You look better.”_

_Liar._

_Doppler set down the tray and sat down on the edge of the bed._

_“How long have I been in here?” Why that was the first question to leave him was unknown to Jonas. There were half a dozen questions shooting through his mind really. He wanted to know if Martha was alright, and if Bartosz was. Did his mom know he was in here and, if so, had she come to see him yet? Or had he forgotten about her visit? He knew how confused he got during an…episode, how much he couldn’t remember. It frustrated him._

_Doppler folded his hands in his lap. “Five days,” he replied softly._

_It felt longer somehow. Jonas let the knowledge settle and tried to accept the fact that for five long days he had worried everyone he cared about. The contrition was something he kept hidden, though, because he knew Doppler was studying his every reaction, his every thought, his every expression flitting across his face, no matter how obvious or not._

_“Are you hungry?”_

_Jonas nodded._

_Relief made it easier to breathe when Doppler untied him and helped him to sit up. His muscles ached and his bones crunched, but Jonas didn’t care. After Doppler handed him the tray of food, he dug in, his stomach growling at the sight of the food. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw Doppler smiled, content._

_“Do you remember what happened?”_

_Those images flashed before his eyes again, but Jonas couldn’t make sense of them. Swallowing down a bite of chicken, Jonas lowered his hands and stared dully at the food, suddenly feeling a lot less hungry. He laid down the cutlery. “Did I hit a nurse?” he asked, the sight of a bloody lip one of the few clear images in his head._

_“You managed quite a good hit at Michael,” Doppler hummed, not a trace of anger in his voice. On the contrary, he sounded slightly amused. “Don’t worry about him, I think he’s been hit harder in the face during his martial arts training when he was younger.”_

_Doppler’s words weren’t reassuring. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly._

_“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Doppler replied instantly. “I’m glad you seem better. Now go on, eat.”_

_The idea of putting food in his mouth unsettled his stomach and, for a moment, Jonas feared that the small amount he had already eaten would come out again. He set the tray aside and lowered his gaze. His hair was getting long again and fell in front of his eyes._

_“What did my mom say when you called her?” he asked._

_It was a question Doppler had expected, but it probably wasn’t the first one he’d expected. Jonas was surprised, too. More and more, his words came out without his permission. More and more, everything fell beyond his control._

_“She’s very worried,” Doppler replied._

_The other questions he swallowed down with a sip of water – the only thing he could digest without threatening to feel sick to his stomach. Jonas didn’t want to hear Doppler tell him how upset Martha was or how perturbed Bartosz felt. He didn’t want to be confronted with the fact that he had hurt his friends and family, more than he already had in the past._

_“I’ve altered your medication,” Doppler said then, seemingly sensing his need for a different subject, for a distraction. As much as a distraction was possible while surrounded by nothing but four white walls. “You’re not experiencing any side-effects? Headaches? Nausea? Dry mouth?”_

_He would have laughed if he didn’t fear Doppler would decide he needed to stay in isolation for another day then. “My head always hurts and my stomach always aches,” he settled on. “What different medicine am I taking?”_

_“A new antipsychotic,” Doppler explained. “Abilify.”_

_It sounded made-up. Jonas didn’t know why he’d bothered to ask._

_“Can I return to the living room?” he asked after a short moment of silence._

_Doppler’s hesitance was enough answer. “I would like to monitor you for a few more hours first,” he said. His blue eyes never left him, and Jonas wondered if Franziska had the same gaze as him. He had never really bothered to compare them. Then again, Franziska wasn’t his friend. They barely spoke despite having been hospitalized together for months already. “Have patience, Jonas.”_

_“Have patience,” he echoed hollowly. “It’s hard being patient when you know you’re not going to get better.”_

_Doppler’s hand folded around his wrist and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Don’t give up hope,” he said. It sounded melodramatic, cliché, and Jonas felt something coil within him at the realisation that Doppler couldn’t help him. It twisted inside his core, as if stirring awake and desperately searching for a way out._

_It was anger, Jonas realised, anger and desperation, outrage and exasperation._

_He wanted to throw the tray of food still sitting on his lap against the wall. His fingers curled around the edges, his knuckles turning white, but Doppler’s hand around his wrist stopped him. His touch, meant to calm and reassure, smothered the heat coiling inside of him and instead filled him with hopelessness._

_Devastation made his muscles go slack. Jonas sighed heavily and, instead of throwing the tray to the other side of room, calmly set it down on the floor. Feeling anger and outrage and all those other incentive emotions exhausted him. Fighting exhausted him, so Jonas let go of those feelings and instead turned… He wished he could feel nothing. Nothing would be better than this._

_“I’m tired,” he said, dragging a heavy hand through his too-long hair. He was in desperate need for a shower, would need one before he could face Martha again – no. The thought of having to face Martha caused his entire being to shudder. Her worry, her fear, her anger, her whatever-the-hell-he-made-her-feel was too much for him. His biggest fear was that he would be forgotten. His greatest hope was that they would forget._

_There were too many contradictions fighting inside of him. Fear and hope. Belligerence and despair. Wanting and needing._

_Doppler stood. “Eat some more,” he pressed on, pointing at the barely-touched plate of food. “You can rest after. I’ll come check in on you in thirty minutes.”_

_He hadn’t locked the door. That was the first thing Jonas noticed when Doppler had left. The psychiatrist had turned, had offered him another hopeful, sincere smile, had gestured to the plate one final time, and had left. The lockset had clicked into place, but it hadn’t locked him inside. For a few eternal seconds, Jonas had stared at the white door, had wondered what it meant, but then his mind had caught up with the facts._

_He could walk out if he wanted to. Doppler didn’t consider him a flight-risk._

_Slowly, his muscles still aching from having been unused for days, Jonas stood, stepped over the tray, and approached the door. His hand shook as he reached for the knob. His legs trembled as they fought to keep him upright. His shoulders tensed as freedom became within reach. Every fibre of his being reacted._

_The hallway was empty, as was the next. Shadows were playing along the walls as dusk settled outside. Jonas let his hand brush along the white paint and imagined those shadows drawing him in, engulfing him and making him disappear. That would be an easy solution. That would be instant._

_His heart hammered inside his chest, fearful of being caught. Fearful of having to return to that isolation room and spend three more days with nothing but his own thoughts. Jonas snuck across a third hallway that lead to a staff entrance. It was around seven in the evening, so chances were that all the nurses and other employees of the hospital were either having dinner with the patients or having dinner in their staff room. It was now or never._

_His footsteps echoed loudly throughout the stairwell, the sound deafening to his ears – or was that his own heart he heard pounding against his ribcage? His own breathing rasping in and out of his lungs? Jonas had been here long enough to know all the hidden doors, the ones patients weren’t supposed to know about. He and Bartosz had spent several nights mapping out the hospital, just for fun._

_Only when the cool evening air brushed across his cheeks did he allow relief to settle in his bones. Jonas halted, sucked in a deep breath, and gazed up at the first stars visible in the darkening sky. It would be a cold night, possibly even a freezing night. It wasn't until his feet hit the dewy blades of grass that Jonas realized he wasn't wearing shoes. It was such a ridiculous concept that it made him laugh – he didn’t care how loud he laughed, there was no-one around to hear him. He paused for a moment, focused on the softness of the ground beneath his feet, and then ran._

_Running felt like his only option. He needed to run to get as far away from the hospital as possible. He needed to run so he wouldn’t be caught. He needed to run, because the cave was calling to him. It roared at him from somewhere deep inside its intricate system of tunnels. It made the ground tremble beneath his bare foot, luring him closer._

_It started to rain – it felt appropriate._

_Only when he reached the edge of the forest did he halt. The soles of his feet hurt from walking on hard asphalt and small pebbles. His white hospital-pants were dirty and his white hospital-shirt was soaked, chilling him to his core, but Jonas didn’t feel the cold. It was strange how easily he could push aside physical discomforts now that his mind had decided it would all end soon._

_Small twigs crunched beneath his feet as he made his way towards the cave. It called for him, alluring him closer._

_Jonas had always liked the forest, had come here when he’d been younger with his dad, collecting chestnuts and pinecones to show to his mom when they got home. His dad had shown him all the different leaves and pointed out all the different trees, but Jonas barely recognized any of them anymore. He couldn’t differentiate between an oak tree or an ash tree, a silver birch or a common beech, and he wished he had paid more attention to his dad then. He wished he had appreciated his time with his dad more. Later, he had come here with his friends. They would challenge each other to enter the cave and retrieve abandoned objects. Back then, the cave had been a large, gaping mouth in the middle of the forest, dark and frightening, as if it could eat you and spit out only your bones, but Jonas didn’t look at the cave like that anymore. It had become a soothing presence, a place he could be alone, a chance to escape._

_That was all he wanted; to escape. His chest swelled at the notion of everything ending. Perhaps he should have written a letter, to explain himself, and for a moment Jonas hesitated. For one brief second, he wondered if he should go back, but when he tried to decide what he would write, that feeling of devastation returned, of desolation, and that was something he didn’t want to force upon anyone else. That was something he needed to take with him and let die with him._

_His hair stuck to his rain-soaked skin. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled._

_He stood at the entrance of the cave._

_Last time he had been here, he hadn’t stood here as himself. A stranger had stood here, a version of Jonas no-one knew or liked. He had been convinced the cave offered a way to travel through time and he had been adamant to stop his father from killing himself. He had been angry and delusional and unhinged. Jonas disliked that version of himself, and tonight he could eliminate that boy. Tonight, he would end it all. There would be no more fear of becoming a stranger, of becoming someone no-one loved. There would be no more anger, no more heartbreak, no more loneliness. After tonight, he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone anymore._

_People left all sorts of stuff near the cave. There lay an abandoned red chair to the left and a rusty old bicycle to the right. Bartosz had once tried to ride it, had fallen, and cut open his hand by grasping the handlebar grip too tightly. Jonas still remembered sitting and waiting in the hospital all afternoon for a doctor to stitch him up and inject him with a tetanus vaccine. They had laughed and joked and annoyed the hospital staff, much to Bartosz’ mother’s exasperation._

_Those had been the good days. Innocent days. They hadn’t known yet what was to come. They hadn’t known yet Bartosz’ mom would get cancer or that Mikkel would be murdered. They hadn’t known yet his dad would hang himself in the attic, leaving nothing but a note. It was funny how that had angered Jonas; that note. He’d refused to read it, had found that no excuse would be good enough to justify his actions. Now he understood. Now he knew how his father had felt the days before his suicide. He felt it, too._

_Finally, he found what he was looking for. Jonas picked up the long piece of thick rope and let it slide between his fingers. The skin of his neck pricked with remembrance._

_He had been angry with his father for leaving him behind in this unpredictable world with nothing but a note. Now he would leave behind those he loved with even less. It felt like a cruel twist of fate._

_The ground beneath his feet trembled._

_The cave rumbled._

_Jonas’ heart beat calmly inside his chest. There were no nerves raging through his veins. There was no fear moving around his body like a claw, trying to hold him back. There was only determination. This was the right thing to do. This was the only way to end the suffering – his own and that which he forced onto everyone else. As the rain continued to pour down on him, Jonas closed his eyes and thought about everyone he loved one final time. He thought about his dad and he thought about his mom. He thought about his grandmother and he thought about Bartosz. He even thought about Franziska and Magnus. And finally, he thought about Martha. He remembered the softness of his skin and the redness of her lips. He remembered the kindness in her eyes and gentleness of her fingers. He remembered their kiss ghosting across his lips._

_His eyes opened._

_A smile curved the edges of his lips upward._

_The rope lay secure in his steady hands._

_Jonas inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, and entered the cave._


	5. An Acquired Life for Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter! I hope you have enjoyed reading this story as I have enjoyed writing it!

This was the worst possible place in this entire building to be having this conversation. Jonas closed the door behind him and could only hope Peter Doppler wouldn’t return to his office any time soon. Martha stood by the window, sunlight folding around her and illuminating her skin. Even when she looked worried, she was beautiful, but Jonas didn’t have time to wonder at her delicacy.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I knew you’d come here,” she repeated. Her arms were folded around her middle, as if she wanted to make herself as small as possible, but at the same time, her gaze stood wide and sharp. Determined. “I’ve thought about what you said earlier, what you tried to explain.”

Jonas swallowed heavily. “Oh?”

“If what you’re saying is true, then…” She lowered her gaze and bit down on her lower lip. “If you haven’t been messing with me, or with yourself for that matter, and you really are from another world, then Mikkel is alive there.”

The words were like a punch to his gut.

“You said he didn’t die–”

“I said he wasn’t murdered,” Jonas interjected. It was the kind thing to do, he told himself, despite Martha’s dark eyes flashing with confusion. She deserved the truth. “I said he disappeared, because he travelled through time, but Mikkel never…” How could he explain this without hurting her? Without breaking her heart? “He grew up out of his time and despite having tried to build a life for himself, he never…” It sounded crazy to his own ears, he could only imagine what it sounded like to Martha.

His gaze flickered to his older self who had stepped to the side, wanting to give them space – or so Jonas assumed. He felt grateful that he didn’t interfere, but he could really use some help right now.

“Mikkel Nielsen became Michael Kahnwald,” the Stranger said, recognizing the plea for help he read in Jonas’ eyes. Or perhaps he remembered what it felt like to stand there, so far away from Martha, the air between them cold. “He married Hannah and fathered one son.”

Martha stared at him. “I’m sorry, but who are you?”

The Stranger offered her a cool and distant smile.

Martha turned away from him.

“Did you hear what he said?” Jonas pressed on. Before he left, before he found the orb and returned to his own world with the Stranger, he needed Martha to know the truth of who he really was. Only then there was an inkling of hope that she would be able forget about him and move on. “Mikkel is my father. That makes you my aunt.”

Martha’s breathing quickened. “This is madness.”

“I’m sorry.” His eyes fluttered shut, unwilling to see the disgust in her eyes. She deserved the truth, she _needed_ the truth to accept that he had to leave, but he didn’t want to break their bond either. He didn’t want to leave her with abhorrence in her eyes. “I should never have kissed you, Martha, I am so sorry that I–”

Her hands folded around his.

Jonas’ blue eyes flickered open and locked with her brown ones.

“You really believe this, don’t you?” she asked quietly.

He nodded.

“Then I believe you.” She wasn’t lying, Jonas could see the sincerity in her gaze. Something had changed within her, acceptance softening her expression. Her touch was kind, her skin warm. Jonas wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around her middle and pull her close, hug her and kiss her, but it would be wrong. “I found you were different since the moment you were released from the isolation room.” Her left hand reached up to stroke his too-long hair, “I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“Jonas,” the Stranger said then, calling for his attention. “We must go.”

Martha spun around. “Are you from his world, too?” she demanded to know. Jonas disliked the fact that she let go of him, his skin cold where she had previously warmed it, but what he disliked more was the fact that she approached the Stranger. Somehow, he wanted to protect her from him, like he could taint her. Jonas hated the man he would become, didn’t understand _how_ he would become him, and he certainty didn’t want Martha to know that this was his future.

He didn’t get a chance to stop her.

“You look familiar now that I think about it,” she mused as she stood in front of his older self. The Stranger tensed, every muscle in his body straining with discomfort. His lips pressed together into two thin lines and the colour of his skin drained away. “Your eyes,” Martha murmured, her words meant for herself rather than for them. “I’ve seen your eyes before.”

“Martha…” the Stranger breathed.

Her gaze widened with realisation. And shock. “They look just like yours,” she gasped, turning back to Jonas.

“He is me,” Jonas admitted reluctantly.

She opened and closed her mouth several times, to ask questions that would bring no clarification. Her hand moved to her brow and rubbed the skin there. “My head hurts,” she muttered, her eyes squeezing shut for a moment.

“I know how you feel,” Jonas said. Closing the distance between them again, he reached for her hand still rubbing her brow and held it. He ran soothing circles in the palm of her hand and wished he could find a way to explain this in an easy way that didn’t sound like utter madness.

“If you’re not my Jonas…” she started suddenly, staring at him from underneath dark eyelashes with sudden perplexity. It was as though the pieces of this massive and complex puzzle were finally falling into place. “Where is my Jonas?”

Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see the Stranger lower his gaze. He had known this question would come and clearly knew the answer that would follow. The truth was that Jonas hadn’t thought of that before. Not a too-long hair on his constantly aching head had stopped to think where his doppelganger was. His conscience reared its head as responsibility crashed into his chest like a rocky wave crashing into an already crumbling shoreline.

Jonas parted his lips to reply, only to realise that he had absolutely no answer to that question. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

Martha’s attention snapped towards the Stranger standing aside, leaning against the wall with one shoulder, his gaze still fixed on the floor. “You know,” she almost accused. “If you’re from the future, if you’ve already lived through this once, then you know where my Jonas is.”

The Stranger only slowly glanced up. His gaze betrayed nothing but sorrow. “I know where he is,” he said. With a sigh, he pushed himself away from the wall, straightened his back, and ran a hand through his dirty hair. His blue eyes turned even more burdened than before. “I wish I wasn’t meant to be the one to tell you this, but your Jonas… He’s dead.”

Martha stood unmoving. Unfaltering. “You’re lying,” she accused with heat in her voice.

“I’m sorry, Martha, but it’s the truth.” The Stranger looked her directly in the eyes. “On the night that Jonas appeared with the orb, your Jonas must have gone to the cave, too.”

“No, that’s impossible.” If looks could kill, the Stranger would be dead. “He was locked in the isolation room, he couldn’t have–”

“He must have escaped.” He spoke with a harsh tone, a brusqueness to his words that clearly hurt her, and Jonas wanted to silence him or at least warn him not to be so cruel, but then he remembered that the Stranger had lived through all this before, had stood where he stood and listened to his older self spit out this explanation. To have Martha look at him like that, with hatred blazing behind her eyes, had to be condemning. “He went to the cave that evening with a very clear intention, I think. His first suicide-attempt failed. His second was successful. Doppler must have realised he’d escaped and went looking for him at the cave. Instead he found me, unconscious from traveling between worlds. Obviously, he didn’t bother to search the cave any further or he would have found him.”

“You _liar_ ,” Martha spat. Tears streamed down her face – tears of agony and anger and bewilderment. Before Jonas understood what was happening, she threw herself at the older Jonas and beat her fists against his chest. “How would you know? How would you _know?_ ”

The Stranger didn’t try and stop her.

Jonas did. Throwing his arms around her, he dragged her away from him and held her. She pressed her face against his neck and sobbed, her whole body shaking with grieve. He wished there was something he could say to ease her pain, but he figured he had already said enough.

“I know,” the Stranger said, his voice soft, almost empty. “I know, because that’s where you want to go now.”

Martha pulled herself out of Jonas’ arms and angrily wiped away her tears. “Yes,” her voice sounded tremulous, her entire body shook, “that’s where I want to go.” Her attention flitted from the older Jonas, her gaze hard and accusing when looking at him, to the younger one. Then her entire being softened. Fragility moved around her like a glass cocoon, threatening to shatter with the smallest of tremor. “We can’t leave him there,” she cried softly. Her hands grabbed hold of his. “We need to find him.”

Finding the orb was important. Getting back to his world was important, but one look at Martha and Jonas decided he would forgo everything in favour of her. His gaze shifted to the Stranger, as if wanting to ask his permission, but the Stranger had moved to stand by the window, his back turned to them. Jonas sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, and focused on the feeling of Martha’s hands in his own. “We’ll go find him,” he said, the words leaving him without his permission. She threw her arms around his neck and held onto him. When he inhaled, he could smell her citrus-shampoo again. “Of course we won’t leave him there.”

“We should bring the sphere with us,” the Stranger said then. He turned away from the window and stared at the two of them with a hint of longing lining his face. Or reminiscence. Jonas wondered how he would remember this moment all those years from now – how he would look back to this precise point in time while standing on the other side of the room, watching his younger self with the girl he had loved and would love all his life, but who now looked at him with animosity behind her dark brown eyes.

“Martha?” the Stranger asked. “You knew where the orb is, yes?”

She nodded, pulling herself out of Jonas’ arms while biting away more tears threatening to spill from her eyes. “I came to look for it, because I knew you would,” she explained, pointing to the top drawer of Doppler’s desk. “I already forced open the lock.”

As the Stranger retrieved the perfectly round, golden-coloured sphere, Jonas moved to stand in front of Martha again. He wanted to intertwine their fingers, but something held him back. Perhaps it was the tears still streaming down her face. Perhaps it was the pain coiling behind her gaze. Whatever it was, he didn’t think she wanted him to reach out to her. “I’m sorry,” he told her, knowing that his words probably meant nothing to her right now, but he needed her to know that he hadn’t meant for any of this to happen, hadn’t meant to drag her into his madness. “Are you sure you want to go to the cave? We could call someone instead, the police maybe, and–”

“No.” Martha shook her head and dried her tears using the back of her hands. “I don’t care what we’ll find there, how we’ll find him, but I feel like it should be us, you know? I feel like…” Thoughts swirled inside her head – Jonas could see her desperately try and make sense of them. “I feel like we failed him, so we should at least be the ones to find him. He’s my Jonas.”

Jonas understood.

He wished he could have protected her from this. Images of his Martha bleeding out on the floor flashed before him, causing his mouth to turn dry and bile to rise up the back of his throat. His heart stuttered inside his chest. Having watched her die had felt wrong and unfair and infuriating and heart-breaking, and now she was experiencing all that, too. Jonas wished he could take her pain and absorb it himself. He wished he could leave her in this world, knowing she would be alright, that she would be happy, but even that was now stolen from him.

“We have to go,” the Stranger said, drawing Jonas from his thoughts.

Martha zipped up her hoodie and buried her hands deep in its pockets. Her eyes were red and puffy.

Jonas was starting to find a pattern in his behaviour here. Despite only having been here a few days, this was the second time he would escape the psychiatric hospital – the third time if he counted his failed attempt the first night he’d arrived here on accident. The Stranger led the way, with the orb firmly in hand. Martha walked behind him, her gaze down, her long hair hiding her tearful face. Jonas could only follow and wonder if there was something he could do to help her. In the span of one hour, she had lost her little brother _again_ , as well as her friend – boyfriend? All because of him. It was another pattern in his behaviour he noticed; the ability to ruin things. Everything he touched, every person he crossed paths with, was left broken.

Despite it being the middle of the day, they didn’t come across any nurses. Or perhaps they did, but Jonas had been so lost in thought he hadn’t really paid any attention to his surroundings. The Stranger led them to a back-exit he hadn’t known existed, but would remember in case he’d need it all those years in the future. It hurt his head to think this way and he’d rather not assume that he was bound to follow the same pathway his older self had been bound to follow, but at this point, it felt inevitable.

They had no choice but to walk to the forest, but Jonas didn’t mind. It would take them about one hour and a half to get to the cave, which was time he could spent with Martha, and that felt like a luxury to him. It was borrowed time, he knew that, but who was he to deny this gift thrown in his lap? Crossing his arms before his chest, the air chilly and painful to breathe in, Jonas felt grateful that rain wasn’t pouring down on their heads.

Martha came to walk beside him and looped an arm through his. Jonas offered her an encouraging smile and thought her courageous for wanting to do this, for wanting to go to the cave to find her Jonas, knowing that he wouldn’t be alive. Her lips parted, but no words left her, despite looking like she wanted to say or ask something. Jonas willed her to speak her mind, whether it be good or bad, but before she could, someone called out her name.

A familiar voice.

They halted in the middle of the parking lot outside the hospital.

Magnus ran towards them, his breath coming out of his mouth in the form of small, white clouds. Surprise lined his features, furrowing his brow, because, obviously, Martha wasn’t supposed to be outside of the hospital’s walls and she wasn’t supposed to be leaving with Jonas. Halting before them, his surprise turned into worry when he noticed his sister’s tearful eyes and puffy, red cheeks, and he threw an accusing look at Jonas. “What the hell is going on?”

As if he needed to be shielded from him, Martha stepped in front of Jonas who would have felt insulted if he didn’t think Magnus would actually punch him in the face for making his sister cry – and he _was_ the reason she had cried. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said. “Go home, Magnus.”

Magnus stubbornly shook his head. His blond hair fell in front of his eyes. “No,” he objected. “I’m not leaving.” As he brushed his hair out of his face, his attention fell on the Stranger standing three yards away from them. “Who the hell is he?”

“Can’t you just do what I ask you to do for once?” Martha sounded desperate. And angry.

Magnus’ hands become two tight fists. “Either you spill right now or I’m calling dad.”

“Of course you will.” Martha rolled her eyes and turned away from him, wanting to walk away without giving him any more thought, but Jonas couldn’t do nothing as Magnus already dug into the pocket of his jeans to fetch his cell phone. The last thing they needed was Ulrich Nielsen chasing them down as they headed to the cave. They had already lost enough time. Hell, Jonas was fairly certain he would end up in the isolation room again and Peter wouldn’t be letting him out of it ever again.

“Please don’t,” Jonas asked.

Magnus held the phone tightly between his fingers which were already dialling numbers. “I’m not going to let you drag her into your delusions, Kahnwald.”

Martha spun around. “He’s not delusional,” she argued heatedly.

She wasn’t helping his case. Jonas parted his lips to speak up for himself, to defend himself in a manner that wouldn’t write him off as crazy, but then movement caught his eye; a haze of strawberry blonde hair and fiery green eyes. Did everyone here have a monthly subscription to ‘ _how to escape a psychiatric hospital_ ’?

Truly, Peter needed to reorganize his security.

That wasn’t what worried him the most, though. No, the implications of the fact that he stood here, and Martha, and now Franziska, too, made him groan softly, because someone was bound to notice their absence. That, and they stood in the middle of the parking lot, in plain sight for anyone to see.

They needed to get moving already.

Franziska, sensing that something was up in the air and wanting to be a part of it, looked curious and amused. “What’s going on here?” she asked.

Magnus only now noticed her and looked seconds away from dragging everyone back to the hospital with nothing but sheer will. “You’re here, too?” He tried to hide it, tried to come off as tough and indifferent, but the truth was far from it. He was protective of those he cared about, and Jonas didn’t understand how he hadn’t noticed that before. He also didn’t understand how he hadn’t seen before how similar Magnus and his sister were. Despite Magnus having blue eyes and Martha brown, their gazes were the same; sharp and shielded and bruised despite their young age, because they had lost their little brother and it had marked them for life. “Can we all just take a moment to stop and think about what’s going on here?”

“We need to go to the cave,” Martha said.

Magnus’ mouth gaped open a little. “The cave?”

Franziska’s light green eyes illuminated with anticipation. “I’m coming with you,” she said and rubbed her hands together – to warm them or to hide her excitement, Jonas didn’t know.

“No. No!” Magnus threw his hands in the air, exasperated. “No-one is going to the cave.”

Franziska ignored him. “Will you finally tell me what that orb is for?”

Jonas wanted to explain, but Magnus beat him to it. “Is no-one questioning the fact that there’s a strange, older man taking you into the forest?” He grabbed hold of Martha’s arm and forced her away from Jonas and the Stranger. She hissed in pain and protest, but he didn’t let her go. “Is no-one thinking what I’m thinking?”

“What? Do you think he’s going to kill us?” Franziska’s light green eyes snapped towards the Stranger. “Are you going to kill us?”

Magnus looked seconds away from exploding with frustration and impatience. His eyes rolled into the back of their sockets – he probably saw black spots dancing in his vision. “Well, of course he’s just going to admit it when you outright ask him,” he noted dryly.

Jonas would have felt amused if this wasn’t all one big loss of valuable time, and if their current situation wasn’t so massively messed-up. “We don’t have time for this,” he muttered, more to himself than to the others. Clearing his throat, he held out his hand for Martha to take – which she did, pulling herself free from her brother’s grip.

Walking away without having to come up with an explanation (either true or false) would be their best option, but unfortunately, that was no option at all. The truth seemed even less an option, but they would have to tell them _something_. Jonas searched for the right words, to explain to them what their plan was without earning a one-way ticket back to the psychiatric ward. It felt like an impossible task, certainly with Magnus looking at him as if he were a stain on his shoe and Franziska waiting– _Franziska_. She believed him when about the noises coming from the cave.

“Last night, you asked me what I was hoping to find in the cave,” he said to her. Franziska turned apprehensive, but she listened. “That orb right there is what I hoped to find, because it’s my only way home.” Her gaze narrowed ever so slightly, but when Magnus protested, she silenced him with nothing but a wave of her hand. “You heard those noises coming from the cave, too,” he continued. “You said you heard them the night before I was let out of the isolation room.”

Franziska nodded earnestly.

Magnus angrily crossed his arms in front of his chest. “So we’re all now indulging his delusions?”

Ignoring Magnus’ comment, he continued, “I’m not from this wold. _We_ aren’t from this world.” He hoped they would see what Martha had seen, that they would spot the similarities between them as she had, but perhaps that was asking too much. They didn’t know him like she did, after all. They had never paid him any attention like she had. Still, as he looked at the Stranger himself, Jonas felt unease settle in the pit of his stomach, because despite his years, the Stranger did have the same set of blue eyes, the same slightly crooked nose, the same thin lips, and the same terrible, nauseating scar around his neck.

Franziska looked hesitant.

“I know how insane it sounds,” the Stranger said, speaking for the first time since they had shown up uninvited. He looked exasperated, the muscles of his neck straining as if every movement hurt, but then his gaze drifted along the faces surrounding him and it grew melancholic. These teenagers were once his friends, back when he had been only a teenager himself, back when he had been Jonas and not the Stranger. “We must go, before someone sees us standing here.”

“I’m sorry, but did you just say that you’re the same?” Magnus asked. His eyes had narrowed to slits. “In the literal sense of the word?”

“Yes,” the Stranger replied. “I am Jonas Kahnwald, too.”

“As crazy as all this is, I believe you.” Franziska brushed her hair together using her fingers and wrapped it together in a messy bun. “You’re right, though, we need to move if we don’t want to get caught.”

“We?” Jonas echoed.

“I’m coming with you to the cave,” she said.

Perhaps he should tell them the truth. Perhaps that would stop them from wanting to come with them. Franziska thought she was signing up for an adventure of sorts, Magnus thought he was doing the right thing to protect his sister. Neither had a clue of what lay waiting for them there. Jonas felt shivers of disillusionment run down his back. Their world was already screwed up and he wasn’t prepared to be the one to screw it up even more.

“Let them come,” the Stranger said.

Jonas wanted to protest, wanted to at least have _tried_ to protect them from this, but when he saw the Stranger’s resolution, he knew arguing would be pointless. Clearly, he knew something Jonas didn’t and, at this point in time, after everything he had already grovelled through, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know anymore. With every turn life took, every curveball it threw at him, he was shoved deeper and deeper into a muddy hole with nothing to help him climb out of it. Nothing ever played out in his favour.

“Alright then,” he sighed, conceding. “Let’s go.”

The forest had become an unnerving place, the air between the trees charged with electricity and no birds chirping above them. The sky had darkened and grown heavy, the first drops of rain trickling down their skin. The silence having settled between them didn’t help either. Jonas glanced around and observed each face – all familiar yet foreign at the same time. The Stranger, with his identical, but hooded blue eyes, looked impatient, wanting to get to the cave as quickly as possible to return to their world, to return to his own quest. His pace was fast and purposeful.

Franziska had a ghost of a smile playing around her lips, as if they were simply strolling through the forest, enjoying themselves, while really they were walking to the grave of their friend – Jonas still couldn’t bring himself to tell her that.

Magnus’ hands clenched and unclenched at his sides and each time his bright blue eyes connected with Jonas’, they darkened, filling with antagonism. He was dragging his sister into this mess after all, and he didn’t even know the worst yet. That brought Jonas’ attention to Martha who walked right behind him. She kept her gaze on the ground, her hands buried in the pockets of her hoodie, and occasionally smothered a sob. He wished he could do something to make her feel better, but everything that came to his mind would probably only make it worse.

“I know what you’re thinking,” the Stranger said, his words only meant for Jonas.

“Oh?” He had to quicken his pace to keep up with him, and to increase the distance between them and Martha. Jonas wished he would look at him, really _look_ at him, but he never did and it began to irritate him. Was he willingly trying to come off as aloof? Did he want them to think he was an indifferent asshole? Jonas hoped so, because he detested the idea that he would become this person walking beside him.

“You’re not responsible for his death.” The Stranger kept his gaze straight ahead.

His jaw clenched together and something sharp and heavy seemed to slide down his throat when he swallowed. “How do you know?” he asked quietly. “If I hadn’t arrived that night, maybe Peter would have found him in time and–”

“He was already dead when you got here,” the Stranger interjected. Finally, _finally_ , he locked gazes with his younger self. There were a lot of things Jonas wanted to say to him, or shout at him. He wanted to scream that he had never asked for any this and had never wanted to drag anyone else into this fucked-up clutter of chaos. He had never meant to put Martha in harm’s way, but he had and now she was dead. _He_ had killed her. Jonas didn’t understand how he would turn into the Stranger, but he certainly didn’t understand how he would turn into Adam, into an emotionless, manipulative, psychopathic asshole.

He stopped walking, too many emotions swirling inside of him, all threatening to break free. They surged just underneath his skin. Jonas held his breath, balled his hands into tight fists and felt tears prick the corners of his eyes – tears of anger and outrage and weakness and helplessness.

“Keep walking,” the Stranger warned with a hiss.

“Don’t you remember?” he demanded. The fact that the others had stopped and were listening in on their conversation went unnoticed by him as his vision tunnelled to his future self. “Don’t you remember how all this feels like? How messed up I feel? How furious and powerless?” His hands shoved at the Stranger’s chest. “What a prick you are! I don’t know how I become you! I don’t _want_ to become you!”

The Stranger became angry, too. “Well, you have little other choice,” he snapped.

“Maybe I rather die!”

Martha gasped and pressed a hand to her lips.

The words had escaped him before he could think of their implications. The seething rage and anguish he had felt only seconds before evaporated from his veins and left only exhaustion in their wake. Jonas sighed wearily, feeling hollowed out, and rubbed his brow. His limbs weighed heavily and his heart seemed to have trouble beating steadily. If he could, he would willingly crawl into that muddy hole if only to escape Martha’s distressed tears, Franziska’s doubtful frown, and Magnus’ perturbed expression. His conscience dictated him to apologize for having been an insensitive bastard and, most importantly, apologize to Martha for having hurt her. _Again_.

There was a voice in the back of his head, however, that grew louder and louder with every passing second. It told him to look at his friends and see them for who they were; strangers. They didn’t know him and he didn’t know them. Why should he apologize for having a small breakdown after everything he had suffered through? They didn’t know he was the reason his dad had killed himself. They didn’t know he was the reason Mikkel had disappeared. They didn’t know he started the apocalypse despite having tried so hard to stop it, and they didn’t know he had held Martha in his arms as she had bled to death.

Deciding not to say anything at all, Jonas turned on his heels and started walking again. It was easier focusing on one task at a time instead of trying to see the big picture. Get to the cave; that was their first objective. Search for their Jonas, tell them to forget they had ever met, and return home with the Stranger. They were simple tasks. Achievable tasks. Jonas bit down on his tongue as he angrily wiped away a tear that had dared to escape him. The cave; their Jonas; go home. He would deal with the rest after and–

Martha folded her hand around his.

The gut-wrenching realisation that Martha was like the others, a stranger, made him try and pull his hand free, but she refused to let him. “We’re almost there,” he said without looking at her, despite feeling her dark brown eyes on him like a physical weight. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m not really sure about anything anymore,” she admitted. “It hurts my head to think that you will become him.” She pointed at the Stranger walking a few yards behind them.

“It hurts my head, too,” Jonas croaked. “We’re apparently stuck in an endless circle of prerequisite inevitabilities and there’s nothing I can do to change it. I’m bound to become him, and he’s bound to become Adam, and Adam is bound to–” This time, he did stop himself in time. Jonas swallowed away the rest of that sentence and stared at Martha with a forlorn grimace on his face.

“Adam?” she questioned. Her grip on Jonas’ hand was tight and unyielding. “Who’s Adam?”

“Like I said before,” Jonas sighed. “There are things I’ve started in my world that I have to try and stop.”

“But in the process, you become this Adam-person,” Martha ruminated.

The memory of meeting Adam for the first time flashed through his mind. He’d only escaped the future days before. His leg had been injured, causing him to walk with a limp, and a ragged white bandage had been tied around his neck to cover the still-healing laceration from having been hanged. His clothes had been dirty and a size too big, and he’d felt incongruous standing in the fancy room where Adam lived. It had felt jarring to see his scarred face, but that reaction had quickly made place for consternation as he had learned the truth of who Adam really was. _‘Don’t you know?’_ he had asked with a deep, reverberating voice. Realisation had reared its head in that moment, the truth staring Jonas in the face as soon as Adam had begun to remove the while collar. _‘That can’t be,’_ he’d breathed incredulously. Adam had revealed the scar around his neck; an exact copy of the one marking Jonas. _‘I am you,’_ he’d said. _‘Every stone is once again where it belongs, everyone in the place they were destined to be.’_

Was this where he was destined to be? Was this where Martha was destined to be? Fate felt like a cruel bitch if all this was meant to be. Inevitable. What was even the point in trying if he could prevent none of this? What was the point in fighting?

“Martha,” he started, then stopped, no longer knowing what was the right or wrong thing to say or do. It probably didn’t matter. “The world I’m returning to might be destroyed, because of something I started, but the truth is…” Releasing a heavy breath, Jonas focused on the feeling of Martha’s hand around his. This might be the last time he would feel the warmth of her skin against his own. “Whether I’m able to save it or not, my world will still be gone, because you’ve died, Martha.”

She froze and stared at him with wide, uncertain eyes.

Jonas reached out to brush a lock of hair behind her ear. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, shouldn’t put this burden on your shoulders, because you’ve already gone through enough, but…” He was fumbling for words, he knew that, but he had vowed to be honest with her, so he felt like she should know this, too. She needed to know that he wasn’t trying to mess with her or take advantage of her. She needed to know that their kiss had been real and that he loved her, because she was Martha.

Jonas would love her always, in any world he met her.

“How did I die?” she asked cautiously.

Jonas couldn’t physically pronounce the words, couldn’t form the syllables inside his mouth, because every time he tried, they turned into acid and burned his tongue. The mere idea that he would one day turn into a person who would willingly hurt her, _kill_ her, infuriated him and broke him.

 _‘I am the trigger for what will make you what I am today,’_ Adam had said. Jonas hadn’t understood in that moment, couldn’t have fathomed what Adam had in store for them. All he’d felt was anger and incredulity, because he didn’t understand why Adam wanted this awful future to be repeated. _‘You’ll carry this pain all your life,’_ he had said after he’d shot her. Jonas had tried to stop the blood from flowing so freely, but it had run from her stomach and her mouth, and there had been nothing he could have done. _‘Please don't leave,’_ he’d begged her, again and again. His entire body had trembled and his vision had become hazy with tears.

_‘Until you’re finally ready to let go of her.’_

Jonas couldn’t imagine ever being able to let go of this girl standing before him. With his hand still folded through her hair, he kissed her and felt his heart skip a beat when she kissed him back. If this was the last time he could feel her hands clasping his, then he would remember every detail of her fingers brushing against his skin. If this was the last time he could kiss her, he would remember every detail of her lips against his.

The Stranger came to stand before them.

Jonas gasped for air when their kiss ended.

“Adam killed you,” the Stranger said.

The words were like a slap across their faces.

Martha’s fingers dug into the skin of his wrists, clinging to him as the words registered inside her mind. “Adam?” she repeated, shuffling closer to Jonas, until her body pressed against his. Jonas could feel her heart hammer inside her chest. “The man you’re going to become?”

Magnus and Franziska caught up with them.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Jonas mumbled, unable to look into Martha’s addled, brown eyes.

“Tell her what?” Magnus asked.

Martha pulled herself away from Jonas and straightened imaginary creases from her sweater. “Nothing important,” she said before either Jonas or the Stranger could answer her brother’s question. “The cave is right past that hill. We have to continue before dusk falls.”

She was right. As much as Jonas hated that she had distanced herself from him, as much as he hated the Stranger for having trust that piece of information on her so abruptly, so crudely, they did need to hurry, because the sky above them was already darkening.

It began to rain harder, thunder rumbling in the distance. Straightening his back, Jonas turned away from a wrathful Magnus and followed Martha through the trees.

_‘You can stop me or you can try to save her,’_ Adam had said. The words continued to echo through Jonas’ head until they twisted into something sharp and tedious, and lodged themselves at the base of his skull where they continued to throb painfully. A constant presence. A perpetual warning. _‘Did you even try and save her?’_ he had sneered at the Stranger. It had been one of the scarce times he’d elicited an emotional response from his older self. _‘That’s all I have been trying to do,’_ he’d hissed, their noses touching, his warm breath having swept across his face. _‘That’s all you will try to do, but it’ll be pointless, and you have no idea how seething it will make you, how bitter.’_ The answer to Adam’s question was a simple one; he would always choose to save her. Perhaps that was their mistake, their inherent flaw.

Martha reached the cave first and stopped in front of its entrance. Jonas halted beside her and wanted to reach for her hand, but didn’t. The mouth of the cave suddenly looked larger, more threatening, the darkness inside even darker than before. It had always held secrets, had always been an enigma furtively connecting the lives of Winden’s inhabitants, but what it held in store for them today was more than petrifying, more than traumatizing. Jonas looked at the girl standing beside him and, for a moment, found her benumbed, thought that she couldn’t completely grasp what they were about to find, but then she turned her dark gaze to him and Jonas found it crowded with distraught, bewilderment and, most of all, helplessness.

“I can’t go in there,” she whispered to him. Tears shimmered in her eyes.

With his hands planted in his sides, Magnus stared at the cave and shrugged, completely unaware of his sister’s suffering. “Why not?” he asked crassly.

The Stranger dug into his backpack and retrieved a familiar flashlight; a white orb with a metallic handle which lit up at the touch of his skin. Without warning, he pressed the light into Magnus’ hands – Magnus who tilted his head, his brow furrowed, and held the small device as if it were dangerous.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked.

“He’s in there,” Martha sniffed. She wiped her nose with the sleeve of her sweater before folding her arms around her middle. Her shoulders shook, but not from the cold.

Magnus still didn’t understand. “Who is?”

“Jonas.” Martha’s eyes fluttered shut. “My Jonas.”

The eldest Nielsen looked moments away from pulling out his hair. “Am I the only one who doesn’t understand a word of what she’s saying?”

Either Jonas would have stepped in to shut him up or Franziska would, and luckily for Magnus, it was Franziska who reached him first. With the back of her hand, she slapped his shoulder and told him to shut up. “What’s our Jonas doing in there?” she asked carefully.

Martha couldn’t speak. Nothing but smothered sobs escaped her lips. Jonas laid a comforting hand on her shoulder and felt relief when she didn’t instantly push it away.

“Your friend came back here six days ago,” the Stranger began. Martha squeezed her eyes shut in a vain attempt to stop tears from spilling down her cheeks as she listened to the Stranger explain her worst nightmare. “The evening Jonas arrived in your world, your friend escaped the hospital and came to finish what he’d failed to do before.” He sighed and ran a shaky hand through his messy hair. “He hung himself.”

Franziska paled.

Martha smothered another sob.

“You’re saying Jonas is in there?” Magnus asked, finally comprehending the truth he had refused to believe up until now. “Our Jonas? The one we grew up with, but…” He swallowed heavily and turned remorseful when locking gazes with his sister. “Dead?”

The Stranger nodded.

Deciding to screw it all, Jonas wrapped his arms around Martha and held her close. He would absorb all her pain if he could, would give his right arm and leg if it meant she was spared this agony – hell, he would give his life to protect her, but none of that was possible. He hadn’t been able to save his Martha and now he had failed to protect her. Earlier, he hadn’t wanted her to get too close to the Stranger out of fear that he would taint her, but the truth was that _he_ tainted her. Everything he touched, crumbled. Everyone he got too close to, ended up hurt.

That realisation still couldn’t bring him to let go of her, though, to walk away. Jonas gravitated towards Martha like she was the sun and he an ordinary moon, and if being near her meant his own destruction, then he didn’t care, but if distancing himself from her would protect her, then the loss of her warmth and love was a sacrifice he gladly made.

“You must go in there,” the Stranger said to Magnus.

“What?” Magnus’ grip on the orb tightened, as if he were ready to throw it aside. “Why me?”

“Because Martha is in no state to go into the cave,” the Stranger explained, clearly irked by Magnus’ continuous resistance. “If either I or Jonas would go to find him, you still wouldn’t believe us, and you don’t want Franziska to go either.”

Magnus’ contemplative blue eyes slid towards Franziska and stayed with her for three long seconds. It was then Jonas understand why the Stranger had allowed them to come; to execute this terrible task.

“Fine, I’ll go,” he said, and walked into the cave.

Franziska placed a kind hand to Martha’s elbow. “Come on, we’ll sit down for a while.” She offered her an encouraging smile and guided her to a fallen tree trunk to the right of the cave’s entrance. Jonas begrudgingly let her go, disliking the distance between them, but Franziska was right; Martha looked pale and shivery. Franziska folded an arm around her shoulders and whispered encouraging words into her ear. Martha wiped away new tears rolling down her cheeks.

Jonas turned to his older self. “What happens when we get back to our world?”

The Stranger was glancing at a watch around his wrist. “I can’t stay with you if that’s what you’re asking.”

Jonas pressed his lips together and forbade himself from snapping at his older self. “You know perfectly well what I’m asking. You’ve probably asked the exact same question.”

The Stranger sighed and lowered his wrist. Dark circles around his eyes made him look old and tired and his skin had an unhealthy grey colour. Jonas had always noticed how dishevelled his future self looked, wearing old, ragged clothes and worn-out shoes, but as they stood in this quickly fading daylight, he noticed just how exhausted he looked. Exhausted and burdened. A frown seemed permanently drawn across his brow.

“The world you know is gone,” he answered with a gruff voice.

“And what about our friends?” Jonas pressed on. “Bartosz and Magnus and Franziska?”

“They’ve survived the apocalypse,” the Stranger said. “I travelled with them to the past. Last I’ve seen them, they were in eighteen eighty-eight.”

Jonas knew what it felt like to be out of time, to be stuck in a year that felt like another world. Eighteen eighty-eight. Electricity had been invented by Thomas Edison not ten years earlier. Jack the Ripper was active in London. The very first Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle was only published the year before. Vincent Van Gogh had yet to paint his _Starry Night_. Jonas wished there was a way to help them, to bring them back to their time, so they could have a normal life, but then… Who was to say their time was better than eighteen eighty-eight?

“And mom?” he asked. “Is she alive?”

“She travelled to nineteen fifty-three.” The Stranger rubbed a hand across his tired face. “No-one is where they are supposed to be.”

“Not according to Adam,” Jonas said. _‘All the game’s pieces are in position,’_ Adam had said. _‘All that’s needed is a little push._ ’ Then he had proceeded to kill Martha and put into motion the beginning of the end. Jonas swallowed heavily and looked at Martha who sat beside Franziska. Her head rested on her shoulder. She looked calmer, her shoulders having stopping shaking, and her tears were dry for the first time since they had left the hospital.

Magnus re-appeared, his face as white as a sheet.

Martha jumped up on her feet.

“He’s in there.” Magnus’ voice sounded throaty, the words barely comprehensible. He handed the flashlight back to the Stranger.

Martha bit down on her lower lip and pressed a hand to her chest, her breath coming out in quick, short bursts. She was hyperventilating, and Jonas feared she would faint. He wanted to hold her and tell her everything would be okay, so it was for the best Franziska got to her first. At least she wouldn’t lie to her and soothe her with false comforts. Wrapping her arms around her fragile frame, Franziska hugged her as Martha buried her face into her shoulder.

“Now you should call your father,” the Stranger said to Magnus.

Magnus didn’t seem to understand the order he was given. For a few long seconds, he stared into nothing with wide, uncertain eyes. Jonas had never seen him like this before, as if the walls he’d so carefully build around him these past few months had shattered on impact and he struggled to build them back up. Whatever sight had met him in the cave, whatever state he’d found his friend in, it had traumatized him, and Jonas felt genuinely sorry for him. He was just about to say those words out loud when Magnus nodded and, with a trembling hand, reached for his cell phone. As soon as Ulrich Nielsen would be alerted, police would come their way and officers would swarm this place within half an hour.

It was time for them to go. With a heavy heart, Jonas turned to his older self and motioned to the golden sphere in his hand. “You know how to use that thing?”

The Stranger nodded.

“Wait!” Martha pulled herself out of Franziska’s arms. “I want to come with you.”

Jonas’ heart skipped a beat. “What?”

“ _What?_ ” Magnus paled even more. He folded a hand around his sister’s and forced her to look at him. “Are you insane?”

Martha angrily pulled herself free of his grasp and ran towards Jonas. “Take me with you,” she pleaded. Tears were still streaming down her face, but her sadness had fused with something else, something stronger, something Jonas couldn’t quite recognize yet. Her hands cupped his face, demanding his attention, demanding him to look into her eyes and see her determination. Jonas had never seen her so certain about anything before. “Don’t leave me. _Please_.”

That voice in the back of his head returned and screamed at him to be selfish and say yes, because he had already sacrificed enough, because he had already suffered enough, because _why not,_ but he had to stay rational. Martha was overcome with emotions, with grief, and wasn’t thinking straight. She had just learned her Jonas was dead. He knew what it felt like to lose a soulmate, so he hushed that dominant voice inside his head and decided to protect her against herself.

“I’m sorry, Martha.” His fingers folded around her wrists and gently pushed her hands away from his face, no matter how much he hated to miss her touch. “You’re in shock, you don’t know what you’re–”

“Don’t.” She jutted her chin and a vein began to throb near her temple. “Don’t look at me as if I’m the insane one suddenly.”

Perhaps that was exactly how he should look at her if that would make her stay, but Jonas couldn’t bring himself to end things between them like that. “You know my world is gone–” he tried, but Martha refused to listen.

“Don’t return to a world where I’m not there while leaving me in a world where you’re not here,” she said.

Jonas felt his breath falter inside his lungs.

Magnus shook her head. “No, Martha, this is madness.”

He searched her eyes trying to find a hint of doubt in them, for a pinch of indecisiveness, but found none. Every fibre of his being wanted her to come home with him, because his future felt brighter with the thought that she would be a part of it, but it was false. It was a spurious idea – as much as his line of reasoning felt credible, he knew it wasn’t. She could not replace his Martha and he could not replace her Jonas.

“Martha…”

“Do you love me?”

His eyes fluttered shut at her question and shame exploded in his chest, as if a swarm of wasps were buzzing inside his lungs and stung him from there. He felt like he was betraying the girl who had died in his arms not one week ago. It was never meant to come to this.

“I do,” he confessed. “You know I do, but you can’t replace her.”

“I never meant to,” Martha argued. “Just as you could never replace him, but these past few days…” She carded a gentle hand through his hair, and Jonas leaned into her touch. His knees felt weak. “You have to admit that these past few days have been strange and intense and weary, but being near you has made it all bearable. You and I are perfect for each other, never believe anything else.” Jonas’ gaze snapped open at those words – he had heard them before. “I hate the idea that you must return to save your world and I can’t be there to help you. Please, Jonas, let me come with you.”

Tears pricked the corners of his eyes. _You and I are perfect for each other, never believe anything else._ Those had been her last words before Adam had shot her. Jonas wanted to form a reply, wanted to do what was right and tell her that it just couldn’t be, but as he parted his lips to form a reply, to tell her she couldn’t come with them, nothing left him.

 _Never believe anything else_.

“Alright.”

“No!” Magnus stormed forward–

–until Franziska grabbed him by the arm and held him back. “No, Magnus,” she warned. “Let her go.”

“No. _No!_ ” The only reason he didn’t pull himself free from her grip was because he didn’t want to push her away and risk shoving her onto the ground. “This is madness! Martha, you can’t _leave_. You can’t–”

Franziska pulled him further back, forced him to turn around, and pressed a hand to his heaving chest. His blue eyes stood wide and panicked. “Magnus,” she said his name with a soft, but stern voice. Her own green eyes bore into his, calming him. “Let her go,” she repeated.

When Martha moved to stand in front of him, Magnus’ bottom lip began to tremble. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close. Jonas didn’t think they hugged each other very often, and it was sad to think that their first hug might also be there last. “There’s nothing in this world to keep me here,” she explained. “I’ll be fine, Magnus, I promise.”

“But I’m here.” Magnus’ anger and panic had dissipated. Gone was the broad, tall adolescent who had fooled everyone into believing he had a grip on the world. All that remained was a teenager on the verge of losing his sister after already having lost his little brother.

“I know,” Martha said. “But you have Franziska. She’ll keep your head on your shoulders.” Pulling herself out of his grip, she offered him an affectionate smile. “I have to go, Magnus. Call dad, tell him about Jonas, and tell him…” Her smile faltered and she turned pensive. “Tell him I couldn’t stay, but that I’m gonna be okay.”

“He’ll kill me for letting you go,” he joked half-heartedly.

The Stranger carefully began to turn the two halves of the sphere into opposite directions. Several alternating wheels inside the device turned and clicked together, and small cylinders slid in and out with a whirring noise. Jonas watched, with his heart hammering inside his throat, as a faint light originated from the centre of the sphere, shining through the narrow seams, just as it had done when another alternate Martha had operated it. Any second now, that light would burn so bright it would blind them and take them back to his world. Jonas stretched out his hand for Martha to take – which she did, instantly and without hesitation.

The light grew stronger and the whirring noise grew louder. Jonas held his breath and glanced at Magnus and Franziska one final time, silently bidding them farewell. Martha raised her hand and waved them goodbye. There was a sudden, but familiar pull of the device on his body, as if gravity stopped existing and the sphere became gravity itself. Jonas felt it draw him in, until nothing around him existed, except for Martha’s hand in his own.

His body floated in thin air, the weightlessness making his feel nauseous, before gravity returned and pulled him down as if it were a hook pulling at him from behind his bellybutton, violent and resolute. It threw him onto the ground – no, not ground, but a wall. His head snapped back with the force of returning to his own world and hit the wall, knocking all air from his lungs and causing black spots to dance in his vision. That wasn’t what frightened him most, however. The fact that Martha’s hand was no longer in his did.

“Martha?”

He had fallen onto his knees and rubbed a sore spot on the back of his hand. It was then Jonas realised it wasn’t the black spots swimming before his eyes that made it impossible to see something, but the fact that there was no light nearby.

“Martha, are you okay?”

“I’m okay.”

She sounded somewhere to his left. Jonas got back up on his feet. His hands skimmed across the wall he’d been knocked against and found it uneven, cold, and wet. The smell was familiar, too; heavy and moist. Water dripped somewhere nearby.

The Stranger turned on his flashlight, momentarily blinding them, and confirmed what Jonas had worked out two seconds earlier; they were deep inside the cave. Relief filled his veins and the corners of his lips twisted upward. He was home.

Still a bit wobbly on his feet, he made his way towards Martha and helped her up.

“We’ve made it,” he said, still smiling.

Martha squeezed his hands and returned his smile. “Let’s get out of here.”

The Stranger already turned on his heels. “This way.”

The world as he knew it had ended. The sky had a pale grey colour and little particles of dust floated around them, almost as if it were snowing. Jonas lifted a hand, let the dust settle on the tips of his fingers, and realized it wasn’t dust at all, but ash.

Only the knowledge that the people he loved were safe kept him calm.

The forest was no longer a plethora of colour, of red and green and brown, but rather a monotonous palette of grey and white and black. It no longer smelled of decaying leaves, wet moss and turpentine bleeding from a tree’s wounded resin, but of smoke and fire. The forest used to hold fond memories, used to be a place where he met up with his friends and enjoyed himself. Then it had turned into a mysterious place, with different secrets Jonas hadn’t all uncovered yet. Now it had become ominous and seemed to harbour no life at all. There were no birds chirping above their heads, no insects crawling beneath their feet. There was no wind rustling the leaves and no rain dripping down from the clouds.

There was no sound at all.

A chill ran all the way from the top of his neck to the base of his spine.

“Welcome to the apocalypse,” the Stranger said.

Martha came to stand beside him, her dark brown hair damp and covered with the ash hanging in the air. Jonas brushed away some of the ash that had landed on her cheek. _Welcome to the apocalypse_ , he thought grimly. “I’m glad you’re here with me,” he told her. “The apocalypse feels a little less scary now.”

She bit down on her lip.

“What happens now?” Jonas asked his older self.

The Stranger gazed up at the bleak sky, blinked slowly, and then turned his attention to his younger self. “I don’t know.” His blue eyes stood wide and uncertain. It was an answer Jonas hadn’t expected. He would have understood if he refused to spill details, afraid he would alter events in a negative way, but instead he looked genuinely confused. “All those years ago, when I was stuck in that world, I returned alone.” His gaze slid to Martha. “You didn’t come back with me.”

Martha frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“You’ve altered the course of events.”

The tips of Jonas’ fingers tingled with hope.

The constant ache near the base of his skull intensified as he tried to understand the intricate ways of time-travel and hopping between alternate dimensions. He knew little about either, but he’d seen enough movies to know that if something changed in the past, the future would not know about it. The Stranger couldn’t know something had changed, and yet he did. It made no sense.

“How can you know?”

“I think I remember, because we were in transit as it happened, safe inside a cocoon of sorts. It let me keep my original memories.” He rubbed a hand across his brow and squeezed his eyes shut. “On the other hand, I’ve got no clue. I need time to uncover the details of this alteration.”

Truth be told, Jonas didn’t care. The details of why and how didn’t matter. The end of the world had happened, that mattered. But what mattered most of all, was the fact that Martha was with him to help fix it. He wasn’t alone and wouldn’t need to fight alone as the Stranger had. He would have someone alongside him, helping him, caring for him, and possibly even keeping him from turning into the person standing before him.

And if he didn’t turn into the Stranger, then he might not turn into Adam, then Martha might not die, and the apocalypse might not happen.

None of it made sense.

Time-travel was illogical.

Jonas did not care.

“Are you okay?” Martha asked, still a little shaken from everything that had just happened.

He inhaled a deep breath of air, held it in as he counted to ten, waiting for panic to strike like a bold of lightning, and slowly exhaled. Panic never came. His hands didn’t shake, his knees didn’t feel week. His heart beat steadily against his ribcage and the dull ache near the base of his skull slowly ebbed away.

“I’m okay.”


End file.
